I just wanted to take a minute to appreciate the scene where Mark gets back from Thraxa and talks to his mom.
Steven Yeun did such a great job in this scene, and I haven't seen anything be said about it yet. He managed to capture the exhaustion and defeat in Mark perfectly and really capture that older sibling feeling.
As an older sibling, I could really feel and relate to Mark's dialogue (his low energy voice) and body language, even his heavy sigh after saying he couldn't just leave Oliver to someone else. [I sometimes feel like I overcomplicate things with my family, but in moments like this one with Mark I just feel so defeated and overcome with dread because I love them too much or can't really do anything about things at times.]
That paired with him having to possibly give up his future (college) and complicated relationship with his father just hits the nail on the head a little too well for me and made me dwell on that moment for a bit after the episode ended. It's crazy because most of my siblings are half siblings too, but I've never viewed them that way until I remember it for a second and forget about it for another year lmao.
The show just managed to capture that part of Mark so well, and it's one of my favorite moments in the show. It may be a mundane thing to obsess over, but it spoke to me personally. He is just so older sibling coded in the best way possible, but more specifically in the parentified way because Mark also has to take charge of how Oliver grows up given their shared alien heritage (something I relate to as well💀the parentification aspect i mean😔)
Honestly, it's just one of those things that I had to unpack for a moment because I don't get therapy and probably won't for a couple more years until I'm ready.
