No, NOPE, nooooooooppppppeeeeeeeeee.
First things first! Today’s video file for “Stargazer in a Puddle” is located here, and you can find all Mark Watches videos in my Dropbox folder. Thanks to Nora for commissioning this episode!
Now, let’s discuss “Stargazer in a Puddle.”
- GODDAMN IT, Y’ALL CHOSE THE EPISODES THAT WOULD GIVE ME MAXIMUM ~FEELINGS~ BECAUSE YOU’RE EVIL ANDÂ WHYYYYYYYYY.
- Like, the story of Temperance’s journey to forgiveness alone was enough to make me tear up a few times, and then you add in the plot belonging to Cynthia Cole and JESUS. WHY. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME.
- I think what I ultimately enjoyed about “Stargazer in a Puddle” was that it showed us how forgiveness is an intimate personal process, and it should be up to the person who was hurt to do the forgiving. I’m not a big fan of narratives that say that everyone must be forgiven, that forgiveness will always make you a better person, and that you should do whatever you can to make amends. That’s not to say that I don’t recognize the power of forgiveness, and my relationship with my mother is proof of that! I wouldn’t be who I am today if we’d not mutually forgiven one another. But at the same time, I don’t fault myself for taking two years of not speaking to her to come around to do that. I needed that separation, and I don’t regret it.
- So that plays into what Temperance has to do here. How can she possibly begin to forgive someone who abandoned her, even if for “loving” reasons, when he might just do the same thing? The relationship between Temperance and her father is indeed one of the strangest things I’ve seen on television! I mean, he murdered people! Violently so! But they were also massive bigots! And then he disappears on Temperance again, only to return to stay.
- Well, return to stay in the weirdest fight scene. Y’all, what the hell was that moment where Booth and Temperance’s father fought? IT WAS SO AWKWARD.
- Anyway, the writers parallel Temperance’s journey with that of Cynthia Cole, who believed that she would die from complications of AIDS due to her experimental medication, so she poisoned her daughter to avoid leaving her alive in a world that would surely discriminate against her. It is a massively fucked up, complicated, and emotionally-fraught scenario that I wouldn’t dare comment on because I have no personal experience with anything that mother went through. What the writers aimed to do is show that people will do some pretty awful things out of love. When Temperance finally sees her mother’s video, she has to come to terms with the fact that it was her mother who truly wanted Temperance and Russ to be left behind. (Oh god, I have to say it again, but the video itself was super distracting because it looked like it was made yesterday.)
- I got the sense that this is the end of a chapter in Temperance’s life, that her storyline with her father is coming to an end. He’s in custody, so he’s not leaving anytime soon.
- AND THEN THE WEDDING! Oh my god, I love that Billy Gibbons is Angela’s father. I really do! And I think the show took a somewhat gimmicky cameo and made it this thing about how Hodgins really loves Angela and wants to make her happy.
- One nitpick: Angela knew she was married! I saw that episode. So…. um…. why was she surprised in this episode?
- HEY, FORESHADOWING, I SEE YOU. Oh, Bones and Booth are totally going to get married one day, aren’t they?
Tomorrow, I start three days’ worth of commissions about Stargate SG-1! Excite!
