i'm so happy to be here

Mel King appreciation blog

[lunarfuneral]

when you're very polite

[mellowingking]

Still chuckling at Javadi listing off what's wrong with everyone and then just saying "Mel?" like further elaboration is unnecessary.

And the deposition lawyer basically calling her a wilting flower. Mel just catching strays from all sides.

[robbuckys]

Everyone swears Santos is horrible and yet she's collecting the outcasts at the end of every season like Infinity Stones.

[perfectimprecision]

today will go down in gay cinema history

[mellowingking]

Thinking about the intersection of Mel King and Misty Quigley. Cheerful, bespectacled, hypercompetent autistic blonde ladies in health care professions whose names start with an M. They're really lonely and isolated, desperate to make friends and constantly failing at it, extremely loyal to anyone that's kind to them, and put all of their value and sense of identity in what they can do for other people.

Totally twinsies! And yet there's the absolutely bonkers way in which they diverge, with Mel being a goofy, earnest, hyperempathetic emergency medicine doctor dedicated to saving lives, and Misty being a manipulative, murderous cannibal nurse who will gleefully torture her elderly patients.

Truly a pleasure to witness both of these little weirdos on my screen. I want them to meet so I can see what strange chaos unfolds.

[mellowingking]

I do think the show continues to be good at capturing how neurodivergence often plays out in social situations with neurotypicals, and the subtle, usually unintentional biases they can have towards autistic people. 

Mel can be the most good-natured person in the ED, but it won't stop her coworkers from finding her to be a little off-putting. They can just tell something isn't quite right with her. They can't articulate exactly what it is, but they sense an anomaly, and they unconsciously respond to it. Not in an outright negative way, but through blank stares and near eye rolls, through disinterest and a lack of engagement. 

They aren't mean to Mel, but there's an unspoken "why are you so weird?" It's a vibe, and it's one that Mel surely feels. She isn't totally oblivious. She's gotten this kind of reaction from people her whole life. That quiet rejection.

She attempts to connect again and again, but it's almost always a dead end. And she has no idea why it keeps happening, but she knows she must be The Problem. It's a failure on her part, and she just needs to try harder.

I think her coworkers would be more receptive to her and accommodating of her quirks if they actually knew she was autistic, but Mel doesn't even know, so she's stuck in this awkward liminal space. 

[mellowingking]

Colonial Williamsburg was Mel's favorite school trip? I'm just gonna take that as confirmation that she's from Virginia, because me too!

[mellowingking]

Mel immediately checking on Emma when hearing of her assault. Mel giving Langdon a pep talk, relating over how much it sucks when your confidence as a doctor has been undermined. Mel recognizing Kelly Clarkson as the true philosophical mind of our time. Nietzsche? Never heard of her. Mel beep beeping on a rolly chair. 

And finally, the fight of the season, what we've all been waiting for: Mel King vs Paper Shredder. Refereed by Whittaker. Santos is taking bets. Money's on the shredder. 

All that said, I may be getting a little antsy now. It would be cool to start resolving a few things with Mel's story threads, maybe, perhaps?

[melking]

guys i found the tshirt mel is wearing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it's from here

[mellowingking]

Riding high on that Samira/Mel team up. Mel always learning something new from Samira, being excited and impressed by her competence. AND expressing that admiration to Samira, which is the kind of support she very much needs right now as Robby tears down her confidence.

Now imagine if the two of them could just, like, realize they're going through similar things and have a heart to heart about how relationships with their family are shifting in ways that are outside of their control, and the existential crisis of identity and fear of loneliness that it creates.

Also, the case being not so subtle with "how to find a respectful balance between concern for a patient's safety and respecting their independence." There's a lesson here, and it's a newspaper rolled up specifically to smack Mel on the nose lmao

[mellowingking]

Adorable fetus Mel sighting

[mellowingking]

Just to put watching Elf 164 times into perspective:

Mel has seen Elf once a month for the past 13 and a half years

Mel has seen Elf once a week for three years straight

Mel has seen Elf every day for nearly six months

Becca is so ruthless lmao

[mellowingking]

Becca is actually the older twin, and she uses those extra minutes of life to ragebait Mel any time they have a disagreement

"You'll understand when you're older, Mel!"

[zevampirex]

Girls of the Pitt, be ready for chaos

[mellowingking]

I really do think Mel experiences rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), where any real or perceived rejection or criticism can feel absolutely catastrophic and cause an intense emotional reaction. It's not uncommon among neurodivergent people, especially with ADHD. 

You see it hinted at in her stumbling interactions with her coworkers, particularly with Santos. Mel isn't oblivious to her social failures; she gets embarrassed and cringes at herself. You just know she got bullied as a kid, which primed her to be even more hypersensitive. 

It's there in her extreme response to what is supposedly a routine lawsuit and deposition. The accusation against her has totally destroyed her confidence as a doctor, and no amount of reassurance from her coworkers can break through that spiral. 

And it's especially evident in her reaction to Becca having a boyfriend and not telling her. It's the lie of omission that really upsets Mel. It feels like a personal rejection of her and the relationship she thought they had, and it drags up all that abandonment trauma from their parents' deaths. So she catastrophizes and perceives it as betrayal, and it may look like a disproportionate reaction from the outside, but for her it's like a bleeding wound.

On a normal day, she'd be better at regulating it, but it's so much harder to do when her nervous system is maxed out from stress.

[mellowingking]

Mel definitely wouldn't have fumbled so hard if Becca had told her about Adam on a typical day under less extreme circumstances. She still would've been confronted with an existential crisis, but it would have come on gradually, and she would have been better able to emotionally regulate herself. 

But on this most shitty of workdays, and finding out only because of a medical issue that brought Becca to the emergency room? Mel's nervous system was already in shambles before Becca even arrived. She's in a state of dysregulation, and she can't stop herself from immediately catastrophizing. 

Discovering her twin, her best (and only!) friend, has had a boyfriend for six months and neglected to mention it to her is too much to process in this moment. She thought they shared their lives with each other, but Becca is keeping big life events secret. And it's specifically this lie of omission that really feeds into Mel's fears of rejection and abandonment. With their parents gone, Becca is all she has left. So she grasps for some sense of control on a day that already feels so out of control, becomes overprotective and overbearing and loses all sense of boundaries, which predictably pushes Becca away. 

But it also wasn't really fair of Becca to hide such an important part of her life for so long, and she certainly shouldn't have waited until the day of to tell Mel she had other plans for the fireworks. Still, you absolutely understand where Becca's coming from. Mel perceives the secret as a personal rejection, but Dana's right, it isn't about Mel. Becca's had so little independence throughout her life, and she's grasping for her own sense of control and privacy and agency, for something that can be just hers. I'm sure she's also scared of change, and worried how this will reshape things between her and Mel, so she tried to avoid the conversation for as long as possible.

Then Mel is keeping her own secret too, and it's something Becca deserves to know, because it could impact her life. Mel's riddled with anxiety at the thought of losing her career and not being able to support the both of them, but she won't tell Becca anything about the lawsuit, even though Becca can tell something is wrong. 

It's not totally clear how much Mel can actually lean on Becca for emotional support, but I doubt she's ever given Becca the chance to try. Because she doesn't want to worry her, and she's been conditioned to believe she's the one that takes care of people, not the other way around. But none of this is serving their relationship.

They love each other so much, but they're stuck in this messy, complicated situation that neither of them ever wanted to be in. The show is handling them both with such empathy, and I think the fans can do the same without pitting them against each other.

[mellowingking]

I'm sure they did it unconsciously, but I just know the King parents set the stage for an unhealthy dynamic where Becca's needs were regularly prioritized at Mel's expense. 

They cast their kids as the "difficult" child that needed to be accommodated, and the "easy" child that was expected to be helpful. Becca got everything, except the one thing she wanted the most: independence. And Mel was conditioned to keep giving and giving, even in moments she wasn't directly asked to do so. 

And you absolutely see the impact of it on their personalities. Becca is confident and self-assured and knows what she wants and doesn't want because she's always gotten the support she needs, though not always delivered perfectly. Mel is riddled with anxiety and self-doubt and lacks a true sense of identity because she didn't get support but had to pretend she was okay anyway, so as not to cause the family more stress.

Their dad died, and their mother had a terminal illness, and Mel was probably bearing a lot of that burden too. Then there was no one, and she had to step in as a primary caregiver to her twin when they were both barely adults. It all just further confused the dynamics and boundaries of their relationship. 

They love each other so much, and the emotional bond is strong, but they've been trapped in this circumstance that neither of them ever wanted to be in for so long, and the resentment and frustration can't help but fester. And then all the guilt of feeling like that, because it hurts to be angry at your sister when she's just trying her best in a shitty situation she didn't create, but you can't be angry at your dead parents either, so where do you put it?