hucklerobby being sidelines by phoebe bridgers codedā¦.walk with me nowā¦
the first verse is very robby coded in itself. heās seen a lot in all his years of being in the medical field, this is said in the show so itās not particularly new information.
āāCause nothing ever shakes me, nothing makes me cryā
mainly how he tends to mask his deteriorating mental health from everyone he knows, putting on the whole tough guy persona. rather than getting sad, he gets angry. he gets upset. he finds reasons to lash out at people because he needs some way to lighten the load of everything thatās going on internally.
but he noticeably doesnāt lash out unless it has to do with patients. if a patient is at risk due to a mistake made or the slightest hesitation, he wonāt have it (so i guess he does get shaken, but again, he tries to mask it or ignore it).
^ to clarify, in season one, he masks his anger pretty well. but in season two, we see him getting more upset because things have gotten significantly worse for him and he tells himself he has nothing to lose if he just damages all the relationships he has. he doesnāt care anymore.
āWatched the world from the sidelinesā
refers to how he tended to hover and linger around everyone else a lot throughout season 2, but not noticeably. he stayed in the background, literally watching everything unfold from the sidelines. this is him distancing himself from everyone.
āāTil you came into my life, gave me something to loseā
wanna guess who āyouā is? yup!!! itās whitaker!!! the golden child, the one person that aside from abbot, robby places most of his trust in.
near the end of season 2, robby tells dana that he isnāt sure if whitaker can āhandle his shitā after he asked him to house sit for him while he goes on his sabbatical. dare i say that āhis shitā isnāt just referring to his house, but rather all the emotional baggage that robby carries? heās afraid that if he somehow fucks up and whitaker sees that ugliness that he desperately tries to hide from him because he wants to maintain this perfect image of himself for whitaker, heāll lose him.
itās important to remember that whitaker is also, throughout season 2, the only person that robby doesnāt lash out at (at least from what i remember, donāt quote me on that). whitaker is also mainly the only person who gives robby the space he needs, vaguely knowing that heās stressed but not knowing exactly over what.
there is a clear mutual respect between the two, and robby admires whitaker for these reasons, which is why he doesnāt want to show him his struggles. even the pedes scene itself was far too much, because whitaker saw him at literally his most vulnerable state.
last thing, promise!! (i could do a full analysis on all the lyrics but this is already far too long, so i wonāt)
āNow i know what it feels like to wanna go outsideā
Robby āgoing outsideā would be him wanting to place his trust in someone else. To trust that person to understand who he is, to see him vulnerable and not use that against him.
because whitaker has time and time showed up again and again for robby, been there for him, etc., it makes robby want to trust him (if he doesnāt already). he trusted whitaker to keep the pedes scene a secret, and he did (until robby outs himself during the fight scene with langdon #rip), and that makes him more inclined to want to be vulnerable with him even though it might mean that he might lose him in the process of doing so.
sorry if this is completely nonsensical, itās 2 am and iām lowkey sleep deprived and should be studying for finals but im doing this instead. thank u for coming to my ted talk šāāļø