"Hey, babe."
"Where have you been?"
"Out."
"It's kind of late, you know.
"I'm a vampire, Anders. Late is kind of what we do."
"Well I was getting... worried."
"Oh, you were worried about me? Aw, that's so sweet of you!"
"Come to bed. Now."
"Oh, don't need to tell me twice..."
Ok so I’ve been chatting on discord with @theladyyavilee @mistmarauder and like you do I had a lightbulb moment!! Jess is an enabler and made me make this post so I’m sorry everyone in advance!!!
We are talking tsunami and the next level layering the writers have been doing. I really love that this show rewards us for rewatching and really looking at the details!
I was rewatching the tsunami arc for watery reasons and it got me thinking about the line the incident command dude says (3x02 15:29 if you want to watch for yourself!)
‘we’ve already had two [waves] so far and can expect another 4or 5 before it starts to recede’
Well that got me thinking about it being deeper than a throw away line about the fact that tsunamis aren’t just a single wave of devastation, but actually multiple waves. We’re currently doing so research to establish when the water theme actually starts but I’m currently wondering if this line is the possible beginning of the water metaphor - the two waves we’ve had being what precedes the tsunami - so the truck bombing and Shannon’s death.
Then the 4-5 expected waves to come after being the show telling us that there will be 4-5 things happen before we get to canon Buddie - before the water finds it’s level. The waves we’ve had since then are the well, the shooting and the lightning strike making 3 and we can maybe include Eddie’s breakdown as another one (although I’m not sure) which makes 4. We also know there’s going to be some big disaster at the end of the season (two trapped dads theory my beloved) which could take us to either 4 or 5 (depending on if we include the breakdown or not) suggesting that perhaps water will find its level the the end of this season/ the beginning of the next season and therefore Buddie canon will happen shortly thereafter!
If we think about everything in a little more detail and think about how those 4-5 more expected waves would decrease in strength each time (as the water settles back to its level) and them being key marking points in their relationship - the most intense ones that have the biggest impact - being at the beginning and clearing a path for the subsequent ones which are no less important, but having seemingly less dramatic results as they are just building on what’s already there.
But lets, for a minute, go right back to the beginning - back to season two - things then begin to make even more sense - tsunamis are started/created by underwater earthquakes which means the earthquake in s2 is the starting point for everything (If that’s how this came about the writers of this show are so genius I can’t even begin to put into words how much I love them and their insane cleverness!) it is the big event that sets everything that comes after into motion - and it is the event that actually establishes buddifer (Buck mets Chris post earthquake when he drives Eddie to pick him up from school).
Then you get that vacuum where all the water heads away from land as the tsunami builds its strength - Christophers line ‘Where did all the water go’ is kind of a metaphor for the vacuum created with Shannon’s death. She was Christopher’s previous water level - his having two parents (even if she was absent he still carried hope that she would return - then she did. Her loss creates turbulence for him (and Eddie and by extension Buck) and his waters are no longer level. I love the idea of this vacuum being created at this moment, but the events leading to it had already been set in motion before she even came back into the picture - that this massive change was already incoming.
The truck bomb is the first wave - and actually thats when we see Eddie’s attachment to Buck in a physical way - the hand holding - and it leads to our first Buddie hug (and technically the second as well). It also marks the point where we end up with both of them being single.
The tsunami is wave 2 - the big shift here is obviously the deepening of Buck and Christopher’s relationship - the biggest and most important pivotal thing after Buck and Eddie’s own developing relationship - because Buck having an independent and strong relationship with Chris is a requirement if buddie are going to work - the show needs to establish them having their own special bond which is separate from Chris and Eddie and from the 3 of them together as a unit.
With those two things established - the two big waves - then the smaller waves can surge in - they don’t need to reach as far because the base has been created by the first two waves - their path has already been cleared making these subsequent waves’ jobs are ‘easier’.
So wave 3 (or wave 1 of the 4-5 further waves) is the well - with it comes the big and key change of the will - and we continue the link to water.
Wave 4 (wave 2 of the further waves) is the shooting which as well as revealing the will, independently continues to further the father-son relationship between Buck and Chris. I can’t think of any obvious watery connections here - beyond the pool of Eddies blood we see spilling onto the asphalt.
If we assume Wave 5 (wave 3 of the further waves) is Eddie’s breakdown - which ties all 3 of them closer together and establishes just how deep the level of trust is between Buck and Eddie. there isn’t an obvious water connection to Eddies breakdown - beyond the tears - but the episode itself involves several water related accidents or scenes (Shark cage rescue, and all the fish from the freezer and we get Maddie playing with Jee in the bathtub as well).
Then wave 6 (wave 4 of the further waves) is the lightning strike - which just continues to build on all that’s come before - it doesn’t really reveal anything new just leads to a big jump in the amount of buddifer scenes we’ve had since. again we have a watery connection with the heavy rain!
And the potential final wave is the one we haven’t seen (which would be wave 5 of the further waves)- but could be the two trapped dads of it all - both of them being at risk at the same time and the realisation that potentially comes out of that - it not necessarily being a confession moment, but the moment before it - before the waters calm and find their level and then they’ll be in the right place to move forward - together!! We know there is a watery connection to whatever this happens to be from the bts we’ve had - filming at the Queen Mary and the road collapse is next to/ over water.
So there we have it - either the writers set out the roadmap to Buddie way back when, or I’ve gone insane and should probably be locked up in an institution - I leave it to you to decide which!
Welcome to Anna writes another color meta because she's losing her mind.
I made half this point before, but season 7 has more evidence, so I'm gonna make it again, just stay with me. Buck wears a lot of red, right? Staple color for him.
And, well, the coma dream has many elements that make it uncomfortable even if we don't fully realize it, one of them is the way that Buck is wearing green.
(something else is the way he's wearing black vans when he usually wears white hightops, but that's not important right now, but 911 costume department, I worship you)
Why is the green part relevant? Well, red and green are complementary colors, that means they are on opposite sides of the color wheel, and the whole thing with complementary colors is to create contrast. So, since he's usually on this part of the color wheel, the green stands out, even if we don't fully register why.
But the thing is, they put Buck in green when something is wrong. The coma dream, yeah, but the talk with Ali that leads to the breakup, the whole thing with taking Red to see Cindy that completely backfires, and subsequently the conversation with Maddie about being the one who gets left behind, telling Taylor he cheated, talking to Eddie about how he's avoiding Taylor after the Jonah thing, breaking up with Taylor, the cemetery scene, the gym scene in 705.
Those are all scenes where something is wrong, Ali doesn't understand who he is, the whole thing with Red is Buck deciding to do the wrong thing over his idea of what Red needs, the Taylor arc is very self-explanatory, the cemetery feels like he's trying to convince himself of what he's saying a lot more than it sounds like that's something he actually believes, the gym scene he's stressed because he lied to Eddie, it's all at least Buck doing misguided stuff. I feel like at this point, it is very clear that they put Buck in green for this purpose. If Buck is in green, something is most likely wrong.
So, Buck has a something is wrong color. During season 7, I offered the possibility of the show using maroon with Eddie for a similar purpose. But where Buck is about doing misguided stuff most of the time, Eddie is about lying. In a sense.
Eddie's color palette is very earthy. I don't wanna say green is as much of a staple color for him as red is for Buck, but he is usually in army colors, he does wear his fair share of green, greyish-green stuff, it's enough to make sense to some degree if they use maroon to say something is wrong in a direct parallel of what they do with Buck, just going the other way.
But why the maroon during season 7? He's wearing maroon while daydreaming about an idealized Shannon and during the date with Kim. Both situations involve lying to himself, Buck, or whatever. There's also the maroon when Chris leaves. He's not lying, but to say he's pretending to be okay with the situation because it is what Chris wants is not that much of a stretch.
But, I just noticed this dude is wearing maroon when Lena takes him to the first fight, which triggers something dangerous for him. So now we're talking. We have bad shit happening to him and bad shit being triggered by him while he's in maroon.
It opens up a lot in the possibility of them using red in this way for him in other scenes he's wearing reddish stuff. First date with Ana, the nondate with Vanessa, the 612 talk, and I'm gonna throw in the Carla thing too because I need another screenshot lol
Granted, as long as the show doesn't come right out and say Eddie is gay or Eddie was lying about remembering the shooting, these are just speculation and wishful thinking for the most part, but Eddie is peer pressured into the relationship with Ana and ends up admitting he liked the idea of them more than he liked her, so lying to himself, and the Vanessa one, he just plain doesn't want to be there and is agreeing to lie to Pepa so, it's a stretch but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the Carla thing, Eddie is at least hiding the Shannon of it all and he was lied to to get there, and while Buck does offer him the answer to a problem that scene, it is a problem he was struggling a lot with and pretending he had it under control. And I will live in a land where Eddie has been aware of his feelings since the shooting and it is lying to Buck about not remembering until the show explicitly proves me wrong, so in my head he is lying to Buck in 612. I'm not nearly as confident on this one as I am with the green and Buck when it comes to the whole show, but at least during s7, they did use it like that, and considering the way he was mostly in black or white during s7, the maroon has to mean something.
Now that we got that out of the way. Why am I telling you all this? It is not just because I think this is yet another way the show makes Buck and Eddie exist as mirrors of each other. It is because of the bachelor party.
Because Buck is in mint green and Eddie is in baby pink.
Buck is absolutely being misguided about what Chim actually wants during this, but I have no idea what Eddie would be lying about though. The interesting thing is that Buck loses the green and Eddie has the darker pink quite literally ripped out of him. Which is an interesting choice all things considered. And they get back to it once we find out Chim is missing.
This is pure speculation that even made me write a fic (self-promo if you feel like reading a confrontation about them almost kissing at the party), but the thing is, everyone involved in this damn show talked too much about this bachelor party for it to be a minute long montage with no lasting consequences and me to feel satisfied with it (rip karaoke scene you will always be wanted). Especially considering with the way we know the episode was actually 2 episodes long and they had to trim everything down (the fact that they tried to shove 18 episodes worth of plot into 10 is gonna make me mad forever, it was a reduced season, make a reduced season) and the ideal world madney's wedding would've been the 2 episode event it deserved to be and we would've gotten more. Do I think the show wanted something to actually happen between them, like a full-blown kiss? No. Do I think a "we are drunk and getting too close" situation was completely plausible? Yes. I mean, Buck was practically pulling Eddie to his lap. And it's not like this is something that can't come back to if they feel like it. Sudden triggers making them remember shit is a perfectly acceptable way to add some tension, push some realizations.
I don't know why, but Buck wearing green there will forever bother me. And with the added layer of Eddie and the maroon, I feel like there has to have a point for that particular costume besides making me want to make The Fairly OddParents jokes.
If we wanna go full conspiracy theory, considering the way the early renewal changed the way they dealt with 7b, I wouldn't be surprised if that party was going to trigger something and they decided against it. We'll never know unless they come back to it, but, nice to think about.
As always, if you read this, I love you.
Other color metas if you like my brand of crazy: blue and green masterpost, red and blue post, blue and yellow theory part one and part two.
the opening montage implies that steven is the one who got gary into smoking and not the other way around. Steven was also the only one other than andy and gary who reached the "end" of the original golden mile. this suggests that steven was just as bad, if not worse, than gary in the beginning. in this essay i will
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