i was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere
fell behind all my classmates and i ended up here
pouring out my heart to a stranger
but i didn't pour the whiskey
After I got out of rehab I started hanging around your apartment a lot more, 'cause...it helped. Back then it must have felt like you had this annoying, intrusive guy over. Not like now. Because now, you're family. (x)
post-relapse penelope’s hands: a study in stellar acting
because season four premieres tonight, it was time for me to finish this set i had in my drafts!! justina machado deserves all the emmys for her work as penelope alvarez and that’s true for lots of reasons, but i’m particularly obsessed with her body language in these scenes and how much you learn from it that she never has to say out loud.
for starters, this is the most physically restrained and even awkward we’ve ever seen penelope be around schneider. throughout the entire show, she’s a very open person, free with affection and casual reaching out. in their very first scene together, she reaches out and pats his hand after she teases him, and she greets him at her dinner table by tapping his shoulders as she walks by, two episodes later. even before she considers him her best friend, she’s comfortable around him.
but thanks to her past with victor, she’s more than aware how volatile addicts can be, and also…schneider lied to her face. more than once. he was drinking while he was around her family, her kids. it’s not clear in the episode if she knows that he shoved alex, but either way, trust has been broken.
so much happens between the dialogue in these scenes when you narrow your focus to penelope. she watches in complete silence while the family rallies around him. she shifts out of the way when he walks past her. when he’s so close his shadow’s blocking the light, she can’t even look at him. there’s something deeply unsettling about watching resident badass penelope alvarez fix her eyes on the floor, making herself just a tiny bit smaller.
she’s been through all this before. and even though lydia knows schneider well enough to check his pockets and alex was smart enough not to leave him in the laundry room...it’s probably penelope who’s most vividly reliving the times with victor when he seemed bad-but-not-that-bad, when he swore he saw the light now and was gonna get it together. she knows that schneider’s words to the family come too easily, that his first reaction to getting caught was to try to move the process of reconciliation along so he could go back to drinking in secret.
i wonder if she had already planned to confront him alone, as soon as he disappeared from his apartment, or if she realized she was going to have to while she was standing there watching the others comfort and forgive him.
knowing how ‘reactive’ she can be, i can only imagine how hard it was for her to hold her tongue until she got everyone else out of the apartment. all that energy and emotion she’s keeping a tight grip on comes out in the shuffling of her feet as he passes between her and alex and the wringing of her hands while she waits to confront him.
that’s the only time when penelope lets herself go for a second--when she spins around, family safely away from the house, and makes it clear that she thinks he’s still downplaying what’s been going on. in that moment she’s gesturing as she talks, she’s letting herself show all the feelings she’s been holding back.
but then when it’s schneider’s turn to talk? she pulls back again. this is the part that really kills me...her hands during his side of the conversation. schneider tells her what he was thinking when his relapse began, and you can watch her uncertainty, her hands going to her pockets and then moving away. he physically removes the symbol of his inclusion in her family from the hallway, and she pulls her hands from from where they were secured as she follows him, worried--but she doesn’t reach out to him.
in fact, the whole time they talk before sitting on the couch, she’s got her hands in her pockets or pressed flat against her jeans. which is unusual for her, and seems deliberate. she reached out for him after her anxiety attack, holding on while he hugged her, and she reached out to hold his hand while she talked to him about his father. reaching out for him that way is a different level of intimacy than they had in the first two seasons.
now, at this point in their relationship, it’s harder to hold back from him than it is to reach out. but she does, even while she listens to schneider explain and beat himself up. it’s only after he explains why he removed the chip, after he makes it clear he understands that the trust between them is broken–and he explains why it matters so much that he had earned that trust in the first place–that penelope physically relaxes a little.
she bends enough to tell him he hasn’t lost her family forever, that he can work to get what they had back, and they sit on the couch. now, she’s finally able to be close to him again, the way they usually are, without any real need for personal space. though she still keeps her hands pressed against her lap.
when penelope finally does reach out, it’s to add emphasis to her insistence that he’s not alone, and that she believes in him. it’s an offering, rather than the kind of forgiveness the others gave him.
the hug that follows is important to me because it’s the first time we’ve seen penelope be the safe harbor for schneider that he always is for her...but the gentle way she touches his neck is more important because it’s the first time she’s touched him at all since she found out about his relapse. it’s proof that she means what she says...that all hope is not lost.
and that’s when schneider leans against her for the hug. accepting the offer. they’re having an entire wordless second conversation underneath the one they’re also having out loud, and as an autistic person to whom nonverbal communication doesn’t come naturally, watching the actors portray that so well is just amazing.
‘you really fucked up,’ she tells him with that single touch, ‘but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve us anymore. keep trying. i’m here.’
