A classic among classics, we’re talking ENEMIES TO LOVERS this week! We get to the bottom of what we think of as “enemies,” and how it differs from “rivals-to-lovers” and “friends-to-enemies-to-lovers” and “friends-to-lovers” (jk, we’ll never understand friends-to-lovers). We revisit some of our very favorite romances, talk about stakes, about impossible situations, and about how sexy hating someone can be.
"You're my only family" landed like a sucker-punch with me when 2x8 first aired, leaving me bewildered, disgusted, and more than a little angry. Izzy as Ed's family? Since. Fucking. WHEN??? At BEST, Izzy was a shitty, insubordinate employee whose absence bothered Ed not one jot or tittle, and whose entitled possessiveness led him to think he could control Ed through threats of escalating, and eventually state-backed violence.
But more bewildering and alienating than that one, infuriating line has been seeing the fandom discourse embrace that idea, first with some people claiming that it's what they've been saying all along (I don't want to call them liars, but I have been in the fandom since April 2022, and it was not a take that I saw before the end of s2. But perhaps it was something said on a Discord I'm not privy to, or on twitter or something; I do most of my fandoming right here, and my feed is heavily curated, so there's a non-zero chance that it was a popular take that just never floated into my orbit), then slowly but insidiously becoming the predominant take, with its adopters going so far as to say that the dynamic has been there all along, that it was clearly always the intention of the writers that we read Ed's relation to Izzy that way, and that anyone who denies the dynamic is clearly willfully reading against the text.
And all of this in the wake of a pull quote from ONE Djenks interview where he said the words "father figure."
*sigh*
So the last time I looked to DJenks interviews for insight into his and the other writer's thought process I got taken to task for poor media literacy and not understanding that quotes can be misconstrued or taken out of context and that reporters have agendas to which they bend the narrative of their articles, and that when creative are giving interviews, their job is to sell the product, not necessarily convey their deepest, heart-felt truths. Which? Didn't love, but fair enough - it really is important to hold one another to account and make sure we’re not just seeing what we want to see, and context IS important.
But I also hope that we can agree that if one uses similar or identical verbiage in more than one interview, across venues, with different interviewers, and across time, then it’s reasonable to assume that really IS a what the person thinks, or, at the v. least, a decided Talking Point that one is comfortable being the Official Narrative regarding the creative process.
So with that in mind, y’all are aware that DJenks has some v. specific insight about exactly when the idea of “father figure Izzy” came into the writing process, right?
(In the interest of not being accused of taking things out of context again, I am providing the date and the venue so you can look it up yourself if you like, the question immediately proceeding the quote, and DJenks' response. The only alteration I have made is bolding the relevant text)
Oct 26, 2023, EW: A lot of these characters have evolved over two seasons, but it seems like Izzy has gone through one of the biggest evolutions. He went from being so dismissive of the others to being a key part of the crew. What interested you most about his arc?
Jenkins: You know, I didn't expect him to become kind of a father figure to Ed. I think we hit on that while we were breaking the [final] episode. He's in such a weird position: He's like a jilted lover, and then he's a middle manager who has to work for a terrible boss. He gets thrown away, and then he comes back. He really develops, and he becomes a part of this family. I think the biggest surprise was the extent that he was a mentor to Ed. They were both Blackbeard. They both made Blackbeard happen.
Oct 26, 2023, Paste: Speaking of that funeral, Con O’Neill played Izzy’s journey across two seasons so beautifully. When did it come to you that his last words to Ed about just being himself were going to have such an impact?
Jenkins: It’s kind of a strange arc in that I knew we were going to put him through all these things, and I knew he would ultimately die. But I think him becoming a father figure to Ed in the last episode didn’t really dawn on us until we were breaking the last episode. Asking what would this man say to Ed at the end because they’ve been together through everything? He went from a troubled and downtrodden employee to a jilted lover to a discarded employee, to someone that is just trying to find his footing again—no pun intended—to actually becoming this guy’s parental figure on some level. And he’s one person who kind of raised Ed right, because Blackbeard usually kills his parental figures. So, it felt right and it felt like that’s how the mentor dies. The mentor in a story usually dies in the second act and then our hero has to go on and try to do it without them. It felt like the right journey for Izzy and a gratifying one for Con
Oct 26, 2023 Vulture: It seems like it took being almost at death’s door for [Izzy] to be vulnerable enough to receive and understand that kindness without reflexively telling them to fuck off.
Jenkins: Both Izzy and Blackbeard have ego deaths this season. And on the other side of the ego deaths, weirdly, Izzy is a father figure to Ed. It’s such an unusual journey. The character is kind of a jilted lover who then becomes a maimed and discarded employee and emerges from that into being a father figure who says as he’s dying, “You’re all right. Just be you.”
Oct 26, 2023, Variety: “To kill a character is such a big thing, even in a world that is this violent,” Jenkins says. “We had to do justice to Izzy, and to that relationship between he and Ed. There is a nice parallel to have Ed treat him so badly at the beginning of the season and then come all the way around to where Izzy is this sort of father figure he doesn’t want to lose — because Ed usually kills his father figures.”
So. I think it's more than clear that the writers stumbled into the idea of Izzy being Ed’s father-figure while writing nearly the very last part of the very last episode. It was never the intention that the character be read that way in the first season, and, as far as I can tell, they didn't even bother retconning what they'd already written in the second season to organically lead to that conclusion.
But, oh my v. dears! Take my hand. Close your eyes. Make a wish. Count to three. I’m here to tell you that NONE OF WHAT DJENKS SAID MATTERS when it comes to analyzing the text of the show as it exists in the wild. You can and SHOULD be just as dismissive of what he had to say about the intentions of the writers as, no doubt, a number of you have already decided to be dismissive about what I have to say. The author is dead! Long live the interpreter! Because, just because it wasn't intended doesn't mean it's not there in the text. After all, Alex Sherman also once said the writers didn't intentionally write Izzy to be racist, and if you're following me (which, lbr, is the only way anyone is going to see this), I think we can all agree that is v. much Not The Case.
If you find significance in the idea that Izzy was always a father-figure to Ed all along, and find compelling in-text arguments to support that position, that's fantastic. I love that for you! I disagree, but that doesn't make you bad or wrong - but neither does it make me, or the others like me who were gobsmacked by "you're my only family" and for whom the "father figure Izzy" take holds no water wrong; it just means I have different criteria by which I qualify the term “father figure” than you do, and find the relationship between Ed and Izzy falls short of those metrics. So maybe cool it with the "rip to everyone who's mad about Izzy the father figure" rhetoric? I promise that not everyone who finds the way Izzy's arc was handled in S2 less than satisfactory is a canyonite making bad faith arguments to justify why they're mad they lost their blorbo.
While George may have been primarily at fault for his turn 1 collision with Carlos at COTA, the truth is that Carlos put himself in a high risk situation. He tried to cut back on the inside of Max after getting passed to try to get a better line in order to get back at Max, instead of taking the normal wider line, so he’s massively slowing down in an unexpected position with 18 cars charging behind him. From the overhead view, even Lewis had to take a bit of evasive action. So while George has responsibility to avoid cars ahead of him, Carlos chose to make a high risk turn 1 move and bears some of the responsibility as well. The 5 second penalty George received was more than adequately harsh for something that when looked at in isolation could have been deemed a turn 1 incident.
As far as ways to get infected go, that’s a pretty harsh one. He didn’t really even do anything wrong, someone just got jealous of him, so they completely ruined his life.
Okay guys so I've been reading Tessa Bailey's books and one of her series called line of duty has a couple which I find is very similar to Nessian its book number 4 (asking for trouble) and I love that couple so much.
So Brent is a cop and Hayden is a rich heiress and their banter and chemistry is off the charts.
