the reason why maurice makes me so emotional is that E M Forster wrote it in 1913, knew that it couldn't be published, held on to it for years and sent it only to his friends, and then after his death Christopher Isherwood, another gay writer made the effort to get it published....and then in 1987 it was directed by another gay man...and now hearing the dedication 'to a happier year" read out by Ben Whishaw, an openly gay man who's been married for ten years just makes me feel some type of insane way.
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Sometimes true allyship is shown between a straight and a gay. Sometimes it’s between a prophet and his ex-lover’s situationship’s Mormon repressed lesbian mother.
i find it really interesting that some folks are taking this episode to mean eddie is reconnecting with religion and will be leaning more into catholicism moving forward, because that is quite literally the exact opposite of what i took away from it.
have to put this under a cut bc i got wordy, but tl;dr the religion dooming is unfounded and, in some instances, actively disrespectful.
i was raised catholic, had loved ones who believed that my faith (or lack thereof) was in direct correlation to my goodness. have had to reckon with what it means for those relationships that i don't believe. i spent a long time feeling really bitter and judgemental about catholicism because it was a tool of abuse, in a sense. so i resonate really deeply with what eddie went through in this episode. i have gone on an incredibly similar journey.
eddie doesn't believe in the supernatural; that has been a defining character trait of him for a long time. he has a strained relationship with religion; we know he stopped going to confession quite young, and we know from this ep ("i was forced to go to church and i hated it") that his parents pressured him into attending mass. he also says he's not going to do the same thing to chris—he understands that he needs to protect him from the experiences he had.
when abuela finds out eddie's gone back to church, she says "you're reconnecting with your faith, with your community." i think what folks who have never been religious don't understand is that it's not just a belief system; it's something that permeates your home, your family, your social circle. of course eddie is conflicted about not going to church, and then hesitant to share that he's tried it again; it's not just church he's grappling with, it's his relationship with every member of his family we know he's close to. and then when he does go to mass, and abuela starts to get excited, he checks her—tells her he went for her, but that he still doesn't feel "whatever you're supposed to feel" at church.
and what's abuela's reaction? to say "what is love if not a sign of god's presence?" and then when eddie asks "so when i was looking for him in church...?", she tells him: "niño, you were looking in the wrong place." abuela is making the distinction that a lot of folks raised in organized religion spend a lot of time trying to get to—your relationship to spirituality/your relationship to god does not have to be the same as your relationship to religion.
and then, immediately after that conversation (the literal next scene), we see a girl who's 'possessed' who, in fact, is only ill because her parents tortured her when they started to fear they/their religion was losing its grasp on her. eddie's clearly very upset by this, and we see he hasn't internalized what abuela said yet: when buck brings up the supernatural again, he blows up. "she put her faith into everything she was supposed to, and what does she get? tetanus. lockjaw. maybe thirty years of therapy." we're meant to understand that eddie feels a kinship with that girl, because he, too, feels like he's been slowly harmed his entire life by the weight of the church, and his family's/parents' expectations for his commitment to it.
when abuela passes, we see him put into practice what she meant when she said love is a sign of god's presence. he asks pepa to pray, not because he needs it, but because he knows she does, and that abuela would have appreciated it. what eddie gets from that is spiritual, not religious; while she's comforted by prayer, he's comforted by being present with pepa in that moment. the same thing happens when pepa takes eddie's hand at the día de los muertos parade; they're connecting with each other, in a very spiritual, very culturally-grounded moment.
and then we get to eddie's final voice-over. he says "maybe there are no spectres, no spirits. just us, celebrating, dancing, remembering—alive, together. and maybe... that's enough," as he and chris build their ofrenda. eddie is finding a way to be in community without the church, by connecting with his heritage and by surrounding himself with love.
the eddie we get at the beginning of the episode is an eddie who feels like he has to conform to a humorless, rigid, punitive church in order to have a connection with bobby and his family. he's burdened by catholic guilt, the nagging feeling instilled in him since birth that he's doing something wrong. the eddie we get at the end has come to understand that he was, like abuela said, looking in the wrong place for god. he's in a much healthier mindset, one that allows him to grow forward instead of being weighed down by the past.
now, who's to say how they use all this; it could easily never be brought up again (as is... often the case with this show). but, at the very least, it's certainly not an indicator that they're not doing buddie canon. if anything, i'd say it's a positive sign that we're seeing eddie confront the things—his parents' expectations, catholic guilt, his lost love—that have been barriers to successful relationships in the past.
and, gently, i think a lot of y'all could stand to do some introspection about how you view religious/spiritual people. there's a lot of chatter tonight that reeks of superiority. you are not better, or smarter, or more worldly because you're not catholic/christian/don't believe in god, just like catholics/christians/folks who believe in god aren't, either. it is possible to be catholic and open-minded, and/or queer, and/or a good person. i don't think 'more catholic' is the direction they're taking eddie in, but, even if it was, i think it's a bit disquieting that some of y'all seem to think that that would mean he's suddenly going to be a bible-thumping homophobe.
i dunno i feel like i have more to say but to me it really looked like eddie was at peace at the end there. like he can honour those he's lost and move forward in life without it bowling him over. and at this point i'm interpreting his faith as something more akin to what his abuela spoke to him about. something more spiritual and personal than organized religion
athena going off about every day heroes being the ones who don’t return home and then proceeding to save everyone at the spaceship herself and returning home is very special to me. every day heroes sometimes do come home, but mostly they’re the ones who take humility in their actions, and save others for the sake of saving others, not for the sake of the credit. athena grant has always been, will always be, and will remain to be an every day hero for the rest of her life and I hope that the fact that she’d never call herself one doesn’t stop her from seeing it.
Athena realizing life is bigger than just letting go in the face of loss hellooooo and it’s the younger her to prove to her she knows how to keep going, knows how to fight, because she already did it with emmet and she’ll do it again with Bobby. And yeah she might be nothing in space, in all its vastness, a metaphor for grief if I ever heard one. But it’s not heaven, it’s not even her life, it’s empty (of the people she loves and those who love her) and something about perspective and life being what you make it instead of you being just another spec in the timeline of humanity.
i loved the callback with may reminding us of michael taking her and harry to help during the earthquake not just because of the emergency tie-in but because of how consistent the show had been these last few episodes, even in michael’s absence post-write off, of reinforcing that, hey. they miss bobby. they’re grieving bobby. he was their step-dad. but their family is also more expansive than that and both harry and may have more than 2 parental figures in their lives. i dunno i just truly appreciate that the writing is going out of its way to find ways to honor the importance that athena, michael and bobby all have had in their lives.
unfortunately a lot of the corny self help advice turns out to be true but the thing is you have to come to those conclusions yourself otherwise it just sounds dismissive and dumb
thinking about eddie who is convinced he has to save everyone because he wasn’t there to save bobby vs chimney who is convinced he’s at fault no matter what. it wasn’t even his idea to amputate her leg. but he did it. he wants someone to look at him and go it was you. you fucked up. you’re at fault.
but it wasn’t even his call. it was eddie’s (it was bobby’s)
i’ve already been obsessed with the way they are layering in old emergencies to show how the characters make different choices under different circumstances but this episode just took it to a whole new level? like, chim wasn’t there for the 1.04 plane crash, because he’d been out after the car crash/rebar incident, and that was the episode where bobby had his first real evident fall from grace by relapsing but the team came around him, but here we saw chim re-ascend as he also relived elements of both 2.17 (shannon’s car crash) and 2.18 (buck’s ladder truck accident) and really took ownership of the risks and decision that we expect to see from a real captain. like i walked away like, holy shit, chim is absolutely gonna end this opening arc by taking his captaincy test. but there were other aspects from those two highlighting how the others are stepping into new roles without bobby there. eddie as a paramedic making the hard calls and recommendations, suggesting an amputation, offering the long-shot call to save the wife’s life when there are no good options. buck being the one to pull out the husband when he didn’t want to go, to hold that woman’s hand as she lost her leg. ravi throwing himself multiple times into the hospital to advocate medical care for their victim. like there are so many past events they are referencing where all of them are mirroring their past selves and choosing differently because not only has the team changed, but they’ve changed, not just because they lost bobby but because they’ve changed as people.
eddie diaz they could never make me hate you. suckin on that thang like That directly in front of your boybestie situationship and his stupid boyfriend. and i don’t even think there was any intentionality behind it either he’s just such a bitch to his core it comes to him effortlessly 🫶
i think one of my favorite things about buddie is that buck never really goes to eddie for advice. he'll go to maddie for advice, to bobby (rip), or to hen, but not eddie. that's not what he needs from eddie. he goes to eddie (after the lightning strike, after his break-up with tommy, after so many rough moments) for comfort and acceptance, for a safe and peaceful place to just exist as himself.
he doesn't need eddie to fix his problems or tell him what to do. he just needs him to be there, and love him for who he is. it's so good.
