The pleasant house, the pleasant husband and the two pleasant sons. She’s not wrong. Ben is actually quite a pleasant husband. He is somewhat stodgy, but when Rhea really feels the need for romance he does his best to come through. He provides a wonderful house, in a safe (according to Wikipedia) university town. (Although, with a population that is 87.5 percent British White, it’s hard to guess if it is safe for all kinds of people. It could go either way really). Ben doesn’t want Rhea to work and even offers to hire extra help around the house as she is bored with housework. Obviously, she should work if thats what she wants to do. Although, as a single mother with a full time job and two teenagers in the house, no end to house work, no end to money troubles and no sharing of the horror of parenting teens...I really, really wish I had a Ben.
But if I did have a Ben, and a pleasant house and a pleasant husband and two pleasant sons, and no work outside the house, and a part-time house cleaner, and all I had to do was serve breakfast, lunch and dinner (with no expectations in terms of quality) I would also be bored, lonely and sad. So it’s o.k. Rhea, and other women who have so much more than so many of us. It’s o.k. to have nice things, and its o.k. to be bored and sad. And that’s why I love this show so much. In this day and this age of public shaming, internet shaming whatever you want to call it, when people are humiliated for mistakes and misunderstandings, and even bad behaviour when really the worst behaviour of all is the actual shaming itself, in this time when racists are pointed out but racism itself isn’t given a thought, when normal people doing extraordinary things to advance humanity are shamed for their identity issues and everything else just falls apart, when the hilariously wealthy are pictured with the devastatingly poor but the cause of poverty is not addressed (just throw some money at it!), when guilt and shame are worldwide virtual goal...what was I on about? Oh, yeah, Rhea! So human! It’s o.k. Rhea, to be bored and sad and lonely. It’s o.k. to take a lovely walk in the park with Leonard. We’re all just a bunch of humans anyway. We’re all just humans.
