CALEB
Caleb! My heart!
So, I’m rewatching C2E11. (1:25:10 if it doesn’t come through.) And now that I’m rewatching, without 100s of hours bearing down upon me, I’m very deeply recalling what this exchange meant to me.
Universe almighty, this exchange. And the initial reaction from the rest of the cast, and then the in-persona reaction from the cast, followed by more a bit more cast reaction…
Here’s the thing. I grew up like that.
It wasn’t bread for me, it was rice. For… basically until I was 15, every single day my grandmother would cook up* a batch of hot, hot, scalding-hot rice for me and shuffle me off to the bus stop for school with me holding a Tupperware of it in my hands. (*by cook up, I mean a cup of uncooked rice would last about 3 days, so it was reheated by Nana)
Did you know, one of the warmest parts on a bus is not in direct ventilation, but is right over the wheel house? I know that. I learned it VERY quickly, that the best place to curl my toes was right. On. That. Wheel. House. And heat radiates upward.
My shoes were shit, my jacket was shit, my gloves were shit.
Let me tell you, we were poor. Goodwill was expensive for us. Salvation Army (AKA “Sally’s” when anybody asked me where my clothes were from) was more affordable.
But that rice kept me warm until I hit school. I would sometimes be hungry enough to scarf it down on the bus, but I usually kept it until we were either at school, or for lunch. Somedays we didn’t have rice because it hadn’t been given to mom (us, I would queue with her twice every Saturday morning) in the food line that weekend. Then it was buttered toast, which I ate right away, because seriously, have any of you tried to eat really cold buttered toast??
Do not recommend. No matter the imagined lingering warmth.
So this brief instance of critical role… I’m kind of in love with Liam O’Brien for portraying it.
It is…
It is visceral. And so are the reactions of the cast into 1:25:30. There is… utter confusion. There is “and, so…” There is blankness followed by What. The. FUCK. There is disgust. There is a little bit of… wow, going there?? There is laughter.
Liam’s portrayal of Caleb is both brief and needle sharp depending upon the scene and the moment. There is only so much time a group actor can spend portraying their character’s arc but goddamn.
Liam O’Brien nails survivalism, and depression, and abject poverty in various moments throughout C2.
That potato thing probably a lot of my generation heard about Lincoln and his time period. It was a real thing, at least from my Midwestern family history. Nana told me about some very bad ND winters where she and her step sister were sent of with fire-hot potatoes in oversized gloves. (It wasn’t pleasant until the taters had cooled enough from the ambient temperatures, from what I was told.)
I just… this is a great representative scene from my history and my family’s history. And from my own perspective, I’m utterly fascinated by the rest of the cast reacting, especially since I’ve seen quite a few of those reactions personally from my own friends.