Gwen/Mildred & puppets (spoilers)
We can love Beautiful Cinnamon Roll Too Good For This World Gwendolyn Briggs AND acknowledge that it is legitimately unnerving for this grown ass woman (who fed oysters to little bean Mildred with off-the-charts TOP energy) to suddenly be dying to go to a puppet show. You don’t have to have a puppet-theater related trauma in your past to be justifiably repulsed at the thought that your first overnight... with your new love... must be preceded by sitting in a crowd of children watching creepy marionettes.
Gwendolyn literally escalates things in response to poor Mildred’s “gee, I’d rather not do that and only that one little part of this proposed adventure” to “well, then I guess that means you clearly don’t want what I’m offering. Goodbye, forever.” Obviously, there are beats in between, but still.
(I am continually in awe of how--throughout the entire show-- Sarah and Cynthia act their little hearts out turning the writers’ unwieldy 2-4 tonal shifts per 60 seconds into plausible emotional truth.)
And then Mildred steels herself to crawl across broken glass to see the puppet show, if it will make Gwendolyn happy. And honestly, if that is not the GAYEST progression of communication, then I don’t know what is.
*(Side note: In the middle of this “THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY” conversation, Gwendolyn wishing she and Mildred were little girls together stabbed me right in the heart. And my ADHD brain got distracted thinking of an alternate universe fanfic of the two of them, safe and happy together as young girls going on adventures.)*
