Whoever did the music for this show is a little bit sadistic and I applaud them. There were so many scenes that had the perfect music overlay to amplify the emotions portrayed with an almost alarming accuracy. Like this scene where they straight up tore my heart to shreds on behalf of Deb. The way that the music played into that wistful, dreamlike and sad letting go as the pain begins to drizzle before it eventually takes hold (at the end of the episode when she cries alone in the dark).
It's so well done though, with the way this is the climax of an entire episode of Deb being denied. I mean the scene even starts with a shot of a Give Way-sign. One event after the other through the whole episode to drive home the point that Mihi could never be hers again, that whatever they had it is now dead. First, Mihi straight up telling her she loves Milan and treating that as a full stop. Then the Sarge informing her in a very straightforward way that there can be nothing between Mihi and Deb or she will be forced to report them. So even if there wasn’t the wall Mihi had put up, the circumstances are still against them, personally and professionally. Whatever they had in the past, the present does not have room for it: one event linked to the next - all of them forcing Deb to accept that as an undeniable reality. Only for it to peak in this scene. It’s kind of the final rejection and the moment it so clearly sinks in for her. She sees an echo of a future in which she is an outsider looking in. Mihi’s future is with her husband, with a family of her own and behind that white picket fence of which Deb is trapped on the wrong side of. It’s just the final nail in the coffin, extinguishing the tiny little flame of hope “lesbian seagulls” had lit inside of her. Hope slashed, dream dead and the pain on her face as you see her realise it is intense. Makes your own eyes a little watery in sympathy for her.
But what I also love is the other side of that coin. For what Deb sees is one facet, she sees reality through a very specific Gaussian blur. She sees the happy smiling family that could be. What she doesn’t see is that Mihi’s nephew is actually a buffer between Mihi and Milan. In that moment he is what links them together, because the actual bond between them is struggling to hold its strength. Deb sees the picket fence, but what she doesn’t seem to realise is how weather-worn it is, how the paint is chipped and that the murky wood beneath is exposed. Deb doesn’t acknowledge that they step through that gate towards her, or that the kid rides off with her and Mihi, that they leave Milan behind. That part doesn’t click for her.
Or the way that Deb’s socially awkward response to Milan telling her “I hope you feel better soon” and him receiving a “you too, man” becomes it’s own echo of what is to come. An all thumbs comment which accidentally highlights what none of them have yet to acknowledge out loud, that he has already lost his marriage to a relationship that was never properly ended, merely put on hold.
It’s funny how metaphors work like that, the statistics of emotion – they can be used to tell whichever story you want them to, but for the main part your view of them are going to be coloured by your confirmation bias. Deb thinks she’s lost whatever second chance she had with Mihi, so that is what she sees. She doesn’t see the crumbling marriage, the divide or the choices made which further the newly formed abyss.
Also, it’s fun to compare Mihi’s reaction in this to how she reacts when Deb has her house broken into. The whole “It’s cool, Milan - Roger will take care of you, I need to scram” to “You are coming with me – fuck what my superior tells me”. Often the most telling choices are the subconscious ones. But that's in the future, because in this specific moment and in this specific scene, fuck me I felt bad for Deb as you watched her give up her final strands of hope.
