SaL anon here friend and AO3 may be back up but that doesn't mean I'm done bitching. On my mind is Buck, and specifically has Buck had a arc/storyline that was actuallt complete since S3?? Like we got Abby leaving, Buck dealing with it and Maddie returning in S2, and his recovery/lawsuit arc in S3 with final closure in the whole Abby thing in the finale. But what has happened since then?? Sure we learned about his shitty parents at the start but thst didn't really get a resolution, just some
some vague promises about therapy and then nothing (compare to Eddie's parents where we got that convo with his Dad in S5 and see them in a better place in S6). Then there's the whole sort of dating thing which leads to his relationship with the reporter and continues to drag through S5 and just kind of ends because it has to, not because of any personal development. I guess we can throw the conflict with Chim in S5 which *checks notes* we never see resolved on screen and the cheating business which *checks notes* was never really addressed and mostly cut from 5b since it was so deservedly hated. And now we have S6 and the sperm donor nonsense which, as discussed, has no satisfying ending in sight (someone tell KR that learning a lesson for the 45th time Isn't growth, applying a lesson is). So has Buck has anything completed for 2.5 seasons?? As badly told as it was for parts, even Madney had a conclusion to their conflict. Why is this hard?
Hello friend! I was hoping to get to this yesterday but I wasn’t at home and ended up being out until late. But I am HERE for this salt and had a little chuckle reading this when it came in because you’re SO RIGHT! Season 3 kinda closed things out for Buck and he’s just been spinning his wheels ever since, especially because completely aside from his own stuff, he’s not allowed to be as involved in other character’s storylines either. Someone mentioned awhile ago (probably @outrunningthedark, hey *waves*) that because Buck is the only one without a family of his own outside of Maddie (which JLH seems to be on limited filming duty and that time is being used (ish) for Buckley-Han family stuff), all his “personal” stories are ending up being with random and mostly unimportant side characters. We know (and love) the main, immediate Grant, Wilson, and Diaz families and as recurring characters, it’s exciting when we get to see them! Maddie’s storyline with Doug heavily involved both Chim and Buck, and everything since has been mostly about her and Chim and every once in awhile we get a little bit of the Lee family. Buck’s season 1 storyline was tied with Abby so that made sense and season 2 was tied in with Maddie and Eddie’s, and season 3 gave us a lot of Buck/Bobby stuff on top of his time being mostly wrapped up in the Diaz family, and then closing out with Abby.
I would say that Buck Begins wasn’t so much the start of a new arc as it was informing everything that came before as the audience and Buck reconcile everything we knew before against this new information together. Which was great! But then it didn’t go anywhere. Buck starts the season with talking about how he hides his true feelings from others and doesn’t want to do that anymore and then proceeds to spend the next every episode after that still hiding his feelings from others, only now the audience is included in that. Since the show decided our characters almost never need to have deep and important conversations with each other, we have had basically zero insight into what Buck is *actually* feeling and thinking most of the time. And when he does talk with others it sometimes feels so incongruous with what we know about Buck that we’re left wondering if those conversations are truly what he’s feeling or if he’s masking. Or if it’s yet another instance of KR not understanding the character and writing shit just to write shit. *side eyes every interaction with or about tay kay and L*
“Then there's the whole sort of dating thing which leads to his relationship with the reporter and continues to drag through S5 and just kind of ends because it has to, not because of any personal development.” Catch me getting irritated all over again that we suffered for SO LONG through that whole tay kay mess, and Buck looking miserable and the cast specifically saying that it was on purpose that we were seeing his face looking Like That, only for it to amount to nothing in the end but tay kay being the same awful person she has always been but the show tried to pretend for a hot minute that she wasn’t so KR could wedge her into everything, and Buck being miserable and only stepping away when someone else he loved got hurt, again, by her actions. We didn’t get to see ANYONE in the firefam talk to him about how unhappy he was with her (but thank goodness we had time to lecture him on how he sucks at being a bf at Christmastime instead of anyone saying “dude, are you okay? this all sounds like red flags.” 🙄🙄🙄) or her Buck get to tell her or anyone else that he was unhappy and wasn’t getting the support he needed from the relationship. Which is entirely possible to do without outright calling her a bitch (which actually Eddie and Bobby both deserved to do, though Athena would say it for Bobby because he wouldn’t do it himself, and honestly Chim (and Maddie) and Hen too after the Jonah thing), because we saw it happen with the Eddie/Ana breakup! Eddie got to tell Buck that he was unhappy but didn’t know how to get out, and then he was allowed to go home and make the choice that he was not happy and it wasn’t fair to either of them for him to keep acting like he was. It didn’t outright villainize Ana (though again, tay kay deserved to be villainized at least a little because she was awful and also far more interesting as an awful person the firefam banded together to hate), but the show was just as clear in SHOWING us that no matter what Eddie said at any point in time, she wasn’t good for him OR Chris or what either of them needed. We SAW the same for BT on multiple counts, even when she was “trying” it wasn’t anything that was actually helpful for Buck which she would know if she knew even the slightest thing about him, and even HEARD it in how Buck (bless Oliver) never said “I love you/her” without looking like he smelled something awful and having to stop partway through before forcing the words out. But when it came down to it, we got an amicable breakup after Chim and Hen nearly died, Buck faced an inquiry at work, and the investigation and department were likely deeply compromised because of her lack of ethics.
A Buck/Maddie/Chim conflict arc could have been REALLY good specifically because we KNOW they all love each other, and more than that, they all UNDERSTAND why the others took the actions they did. But it doesn’t mean those actions didn’t hurt! And we got resolution (ish) for Maddie and Chim during Boston (which just kinda got tossed out the next ep with them breaking up and getting back together off screen with very little discussion between them directly or between them and any other characters), and Buck and Maddie did have a good conversation when she got back. But. I haaaaaate that we got nothing about Buck and Chim not really being okay, but making sure they didn’t drag Maddie into it and trying to not let it affect work, but everyone can kinda tell. We could have had some good Buck/Bobby and Chim/Bobby content out of that, and an on-screen resolution of them talking to each other finally and getting back to being brothers who tease each other out of love. Or that after the initial “thank god you’re safe and home and I missed you” wore off, we didn’t get Buck and Maddie talking to others about the little strain still there and how to deal with it because Buck DOES understand and he LOVES his sister but she still left, and his relationship with Chim was fractured when they were both just blindly groping trying to help in the best ways they knew how and not being able to. He missed out on as much time watching Jee grow as Maddie did, and UNDERSTANDING, and knowing it’s not personal or anything to do with you doesn’t make it not hurt. Especially for someone like Buck who feels so deeply and was/is constantly punished for having emotions by people like his parents and his gf so he tries SO HARD to not tell anyone when he’s hurting because he doesn’t think he deserves to, and god forbid someone think he’s making something about himself. Like, this could have been some good drama because like the lawsuit, no one is the villain, no one is fully in the right or fully in the wrong, and no one is to blame it’s just a shitty situation that wasn’t handled perfectly by anyone because they’re all just human and make mistakes. Add Eddie having a breakdown in the background of all of this that Buck feels coming but isn’t prepared for because he’s trying to handle everything and manage his gf, and of COURSE Eddie would talk to him, wouldn’t he? Only to get slapped with Eddie quitting and then Maddie and Chim coming back, and everything at work being out of sync like....the POTENTIAL for a firefam focused season that was deliciously dramatic while being grounded and real and emotionally cathartic was RIGHT THERE and I can’t believe the show was like, “instead of dealing with all this stuff we ourselves put in motion, how about we focus on some random side characters, tell you in interviews that stuff got resolved because I don’t want to think about it anymore, and sprinkle in an OC and some cheating while sidelining the characters this show is supposed to be about and that we keep promoting in the synopsis to trick people into watching but it’s only going to be 2 minutes crammed into the end of an episode because I’d rather spend 10 minutes showing you the set up for an emergency”. ANYWAY.
“someone tell KR that learning a lesson for the 45th time Isn't growth, applying a lesson is” 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 He’s been going in circles since s4 started but he’s not GETTING anywhere, even when he actually gets to talk to someone about something, it either never gets mentioned again after the episode (the couch stuff with Eddie/Bobby, the happiness talk with Hen), or like the talk with Hen about being a donor, it happens and then gets treated as a joke and he doesn’t think about a single thing she said until, apparently, if the interviews still ring true and they don’t go a different direction (please GOD go a different direction and wrap this TF up!), it’s too late and there is already a baby he helped make on the way. I’m actually not going to talk about that arc because this is already so long, and also I can’t think too hard about it without being filled with incandescent fury. NGL I laughed at the Instagram post about Buck needing to not be in danger, and all the comments about how it’s actually better for the plot when he is, and how the show needs new writers so he can have good scenes again. Fingers crossed after all the criticism across the board OG received (not about arcs like s5 which can be brushed off as fans just being difficult or not liking an arc but it’s over now so why change anything/blamed on fandom for being hateful because they hate women (🙄🙄🙄), but “boring” isn’t something this show shouldn’t ever be and THAT might draw some attention), Timmy can find it in his schedule to let LS’s co-showrunner do their job for a minute and check in on his OG show. Knowing that Brad is back even though he’s never done a mid-season premier episode (and the flack the show got for not having him do the s6 opening and how awful and boring it was) does give me a little sliver of hope but we’ll see.
Thanks for giving me some delicious salt to work with, I was clearly able to make a whole meal out of it! Next week gives us LS though so hopefully we’ll have some fun to talk about soon! Cheers friend and I hope you enjoy the winding rabbit trail of a salt mine I made here. 🤣
