I do think Buddie is happening. Nothing Tim said made me really question that. But at the same time I think he’s terrible at explaining himself or elaborating on his point so then whenever he talks everyone gets angry. He’s right in saying that the potential is what’s exciting because that’s the appeal of all slow burn ships but when it’s never happened for a gay couple before and you take into account the general state of the internet/the fandom you sound like you’re baiting real fast unfortunately.
It's his media training warring with his desire to tell people what's going on. I do really think that the fury directed at him last spring after first Bobby's death and then the ryliver press tour got to him on some level.
He is right in that the potential of a slow burn is what makes it exciting, but it gets to a point where you have to either say no, it's never officially happening, or just do it. Both @lover-of-mine and @ilyarz posted about exactly this earlier tonight. I've always been of the opinion that tim does really like buddie and would like to make it happen on screen, but he seems to get in his head about how he wants to see it done way too much for a procedural that's already going on its 9th season.
The one thing that timeline failed to mention was that both Ryan and Oliver had shaved heads during 2020 because right before May of 2020 Ryan had shaved his head and posted about it, which caused Oliver to shave his head right after (very scary stuff btw Oliver does not look good bald).
He really doesn't 😭 they were doing crazy stuff around then, some of the comments they kept dropping on each other's instagram posts are so funny. Oliver telling Chrysti to not be jealous, my prized screenshot. And I think it was around this time Ryan went vegan for like 6 months because of Oliver too. They clicked soooooo badly, it's kind of insane actually.
Does your theory about Tim and timing (lol) involved somehow the fact most of us can recognize how season 3-4-5 had the best set up and time for a slow burn (if we streeeeech we can go to season six but I always though the whole sperm and lighting arc would have been juicier with a stabling relationship but I’m derailing)
Partly, yes! I've always said I really do believe that Tim wants to make buddie happen, but lately it seems that he keeps getting in his own way.
Now personally I don't think Eddie was written as ambiguously queer from the beginning, though I definitely think there are compelling arguments for that being true as well. But buddie in S2 is written very differently than buddie in any other season. Partly it's because they still were establishing the characters, but from S3 onward they treat their relationship with a gravitas that wasn't there in S2. The christmas elf and the ig live comments were nods to the fandom and its buddie shippers, that's something Tim himself has confirmed. But they never did anything similar again after that. S3 kicks off with Buck (BFF) and "there's nobody in this world I trust with my son more than you," and from then on they've pretty much been each other's most significant other.
As you say, and as we know from Oliver's comments post 7x04, it seems like S4 and S5 were going to be the original catalysts for bi Buck and queer Eddie, but Fox being Fox meant they had to pivot. And that leads me into the theory I have about Tim and buddie: I think Tim has a very specific idea of how he wants them to get together, one that requires some setup from the show's narrative to put them in the places where he wants them. But things keep getting in his way (Fox saying no, writers strike, him changing his mind on how long he wants to drag out the bucktommy plot during 7B, ABC forcing them to shuffle some episodes around, Peter unexpectedly leaving the show) and instead of adapting he restarts the plot every time. Which is why the development of buddie is now stuck again, because the show has to deal with one of its key characters being gone, and ABC demanded the space arc be extended to four episodes, and... and it never ends! But he still seems to be trying to loop around yet another rotation, thinking maybe he can finally change tracks to the ones he's been trying to reach on the next lap.
And it's exhausting. At this point it really is. They've let the cat further out of the bag than ever before with Buck being openly bi and Tommy breaking up with him because of Eddie, but for some reason they're still trying to pretend nobody saw the cat and that we'll all agree to just think boy, that bag sure seems to be moving at times, wonder if something is inside it? Constantly putting Ravi in with buddie this season feels part of this too. But yeah, I think Tim has a plan he isn't willing to deviate from, and that's now dragging not just buddie but the rest of the show down with it as well.
yeah. the entire bobby situation and how it went down will never feel anything but mean spirited to me. filmed the whole funeral in public without trying to hide a damn thing but yeah let’s release a fake script reassuring people that it’s not what it seems just so it hits harder when it Is. on april fool’s day no less.
I'm feeling old rage from last year resurface in me again. The fuck do you mean. You think that little of your audience? Fuck offffff.
it seems pretty clear to me even if other people don't believe at the moment the buddie press tour was promotion for s9 not for s8. I talked to someone in the marketing department at another network and Upfronts is used for promoting a new season not for the season already airing which is why I never expected really much anything Buddie in this episode because they were saying Upfronts is for getting ads and promoting your upcoming season.
This is very true, and critically, the Upfronts are for attracting Ad Money. So they have the actors there to smooch up to Ad Money Representatives. It was a bit of a pros/cons that they happened before the finale aired, honestly.
I also talked to @thatbuddie earlier, and she pointed out that by having the core four there, the most interesting relationship, and the one given most screentime, between those characters is buddie. Like regardless of what you think of the ship, that's undeniable. So not using that for promo purposes would also be ABC kind of shooting themself in the foot. But for us who have been in the trenches a long time, acknowledging it that loudly before it's fully happened on screen, it feels like baiting.
I though we all were aware we’re he stands ? Like that is directly related to being a bad writer I though we already knew he wants the high of the almost because he can’t writer anything else lmao
He's in an interesting position, because I fully believe he wants to do buddie, but after all this time it must also feel like finishing up a thing he's been doing for so long and doesn't know what he'd do after it's done. Which - yeah that tracks with both what he said now (allegedly) and what he's said before. And all the hemming and hawing is now making the show worse.
Like it'd be one thing if we'd kept going on like in seasons 2-6. Buddie was right there in front of our eyes then too, but it was never directly addressed (besides the chat in 2x17 that was a little joke for the audience at the time) and that allowed for a lot of plausible deniability. But they dragged it all into the open with S7 and S8 and especially 8x11, and now he wants to pretend it can all just keep going like before? Well, no, it doesn't work like that! If he didn't mean to commit to it within a reasonable timeframe, then they never should've started explicitly addressing it and just kept going like they did in earlier seasons. Because now we can all see it, and we know that you know that we can see it, you're the ones that pointed the big bright spotlight at it, and trying to act like it doesn't exist is harming the story and characters.
say more please. i agree so hard the two things are not the same, even eddies big doe eyed exposition rang hollow to me.
Ah thank you hahah! I honestly don't even know what else to say! 😅 They wanted to draw a parallel and it failed hard on my end because of the lack of emotional connection and investment! Even if I hadn't liked Shannon as a character, she'd been around for almost a whole season, so I knew her and her relationship with Eddie. But this kid got dropped into the story out of the blue, with no existing connection except the S6 finale (which at the time spelled out that Buck realized he was donor, not dad, and that the kid was fully Connor and Kameron's), and then - what? I'm supposed to just accept him as Buck's after half an episode? Yeah, no. Especially not after the atrociously handled ADHD dinner scene.
Hi I’m sorry this is about the call sheet leak but I don’t totally understand what it means/why people are reacting like this?
Okay this is going under a read more.
I'm bunching you guys together (plus the new guy who arrived as I was writing this).
So the thing is of course we don't know how any of this might play out! It might be good! However. This show has, for the past three seasons, a really bad habit of making bad storyline decisions, especially when nearing the finale. And while I currently wouldn't be putting my eggs in the donor baby basket (something related to the tonally-not-the-best migrant/russian mob/crooked detective storyline is more likely in my opinion) it's still just. A really weird decision to involve Buck in it, especially for what seems to be him opening the door to his house and saying "welcome home Theo" and the social worker Deirdre also is named on the call sheet.
I'm not even thinking about buddie here to be honest. I'm thinking about the optics of possibly giving Buck a fostering storyline when he only just got back to work after the world's shortest addiction storyline. Hen and Karen's road to fostering and then adopting was long and winded and they had to fight for it many times, but it just drops into Buck's lap? Even if it's not going to be a permanent decision it's still coming completely out of the blue and completely divorced from anything else that has happened this season (though that's been an issue the whole season - there's been very little connective tissue between any given storylines, and little to no overarching themes and stories at all).
And idk, maybe this will make Buck reflect on fatherhood and his decision to be a sperm donor several seasons ago, which was a struggle we never got to see on screen because of whatever shenanigans were happening backstage during S6 (A Lot), but I'm not currently feeling very generous towards Tim Minear about that type of storyline lmao. Or it could be a fakeout for Buck helping out with a sting related to above mentioned russian mob, but then we again have to raise the question of Why Buck.
I'll also say that for a lot of people, the upset isn't even about the actual possible storyline, since we don't know enough about it to truly make any solid judgment calls yet. But the fact that this call sheet full of spoilers got posted to a public instagram account, meaning it's now pretty much impossible to go into the finale without knowing some of what will happen - well honestly that sucks! It's still more than two weeks until 9x17 airs, and now the fandom will chew this up and spit it out and chew it again (and i'm well aware of the irony of me posting about this too lmao), and idk man, I miss going into a new episode knowing very little about what to expect. Last season was also riddled with leaks and spoilers, as was the one before that, and it's just sad that there's very little way to escape it even if you don't follow accounts that post bts stuff and leaks.
Personally I hope everything we're speccing about this turns out to be wrong!
