Thoughts/Discourse on the new Jonah plot
a lot of people are probs gonna push back on this and im willing to have a !!calm, civil discussion on my ideas but this is where i, personally, am at right now with what they gave us
Let me start off by saying I think it is an important plot. Families have money issues a lot, a lot of people move in with relatives/assisted housing from having family homes and kids go through the shock of not having spending money anymore. and SOMETIMES it is completely by surprise, it comes out of nowhere and you’re fine one day and completely broke the next. But they made it clear this wasn’t the case for Jonah.
Idk if it was because it had to tie in with the wish which HAD to be in episode 2 or if they literally just didn’t think about the words they wrote for Jonah, but they made it clear this all happened ‘a couple months’ ago. That they lost the money a year ago, but Jonah only found out when they lost the house, but it was still months ago.
But we have seen absolutely no signs from this, whatsoever. (Now the show is in Andi’s pov but im not gonna say ‘andi is just a bad friend and didn’t see the signs until this episode’ cos shes not, she’s observant and she would have noticed, especially if she HAD the wish the whole time, that it was money issues.) The problem is bad execution and plot development.
We should have seen this grow gradually, Jonah not eating at the spoon before this one episode, Jonah asking for some change, Jonah being late to events/overly tired due to home changes. Instead, he gave away a perfectly good skateboard and then went and bought a whole new one a few episodes ago (weeks in the TL). Skateboards are expensive, and normally you only buy a new deck because everything together gets upwards of $100. But he gave it away insistently and had that money by the weekend ready to spend. They still could have had that plot lead to the skateboard shop: ‘oh yeah? id give you mine but theyre kinda expensive.... I’m willing to go to the shop on the weekend and help you pick one out though!’ He went to a 3 month long frisbee summer camp, he’s been eating at the spoon, etc.
It’s just a weird inconsistency.
And look, I know they’re gonna explore it deeper, I just personally think if they had this plot point coming to a peak reveal, they should have built it up over an arc of hints, not just obvious signs he doesn’t have money all in one episode (unless, of course they had JUST told Jonah the money issues, but they clearly stated that wasnt the case). I still it’s great theyre showing that not ordering food and not wanting to go to ticketed events are signs someone might be struggling with money, it’s just how they went about it.
Moving on... to what i feel is stolen rep..
This should have been Amber’s plot. It WAS Amber’s plot. And it genuinely feels like they remembered this storyline and realised it was important and decided to give it more attention, they would leach it onto a main character.
If this would have continued from Amber’s plot it would have made so much more sense. We already know her family was struggling with money, it could have moved to ‘I thought we were doing ok but my dad told me we lost the house last week.’ so she reached back out to Jonah, the person that supported her through everything the first time. They still could have shown everything as equally as they did, just Jonah convincing Amber to open up to the GHC about it for a larger support network
I wanted more exposure on this issue, I wanted them to explore it. But through Amber, the person they already set up and established. Sure, two people in a friend group having money problems isnt unlikely, but they didn’t set Jonah up.
At this point it just feels like they threw away anything developing with Amber and it upsets me. Of course, there’s more episodes to come and she’s in A LOT of them...
Final point/problem: Jamber. This really is everyone’s problem. And that’s the thing. Having Jamber in the end of this episode completely overshadowed everything. It took over Jonah’s plot and reduced it to him ‘cheating’/ getting back into a toxic relationship so by the end of the episode, a few people were crying, ‘why aren’t we talking about the rep??’ because the final thing we were left with was THAT. No one even remembered Jonah’s plot after seeing that, we all just went to rant.
Of course, it still exists and we do remember it, but throwing that in at the end destroyed any conversation we were gonna have outside of Jamber. And it probably does the same with the core audience as well. It feels like an episode like 311 where you watched it and it was meaningful and important and you walked away going ‘wow other cultures are cool, wow cyrus can feel safe with his friends! :)’ and this had the same feel up until the last 30 seconds. tGHC was walking down the bridge and youre like ‘wow Jonah has issues too, im so glad he was able to open up to his friends about it and maybe i can recognise signs in my life-OMG WTF NO JONAH!! ANDI IS WATCHING D: NO!!! WHAT ABOUT JANDI!!’ (or lesbian amber if youre not the demo)
like,, there goes your focus! And obviously this show is about drama and they always leave us in cliffhangers like that to pull us back in. I know they’ll resolve it but for the moment it just...doesn’t sit well with me. It feels like they remembered the wish and were like oh right! hmm.. how can we make this so Jonah inevitably ends up back with Amber
Idk maybe im just salty cos jonah being a foster kid would have lined up SO perfectly and we didn’t get it and i wanted it so bad.. and i was convinced it WASNT gonna be money problems because of the above reasons...but idk
