I get what you mean about that trope. The mother just gave off bad vibes to me from almost the moment she first appeared, so I didn’t need any more development to feel horror at being stuck with her. But everyone gets wigged out by different things.

Lester Freamon’s backstory made me so happy. He was already my favorite police officer with his dollhouse furniture, but then finding out how he got there made him even better. Alas, he disappointed me a bit in the last season by giving in to McNulty’s bad influence, so Carver became my favorite.

Ahahaha, I don’t like the doctor wife EITHER, however. I think the queer characters in this show are served badly by the script. Carrie-Anne Moss in particular is so, so good in this part on an acting level, but her character doesn’t get to be as awesome and interesting as I wanted. I’ll get into it more in later recaps but like COME ON. She’s the sharkiest lawyer in all the land yet she PUTS IN WRITING that she rigged a jury, and then she ALSO can’t find a way to make her wife stop blackmailing her in the divorce proceedings? No.

I SO love that Trish is a badass. I love that she’s a badass in a way that she totally could be — she’s pouring money and time into making herself untouchable, and that’s awesome. Yay for you Trish.

Ahahah, I can’t specifically remember if the new glass gets shattered. I mean — probably, though, right?

Oh, for sure! I said it too glibly, I think, and there’s definitely a note of it being horrible to be stuck with his mum. But because we don’t know anything about this character, I just felt super uncomfortable that the show fell back on the trope of “better dead than disabled” without doing the work to show us why this was how the character felt. Because I think that’s a super shitty and harmful trope that, as a society, we’re not necessarily interrogating enough in media.

Oh, sure. It would be a really difficult way to live. I just think that it’s a harmful trope to assume that all people (who we know nothing else about) would want to be dead rather than live and be disabled.

Yeah, I mean — yeah. I can see that. It just made me really uncomfortable because there’s such a trope of “better dead than disabled,” and this character and his situation aren’t developed at all. I felt really icky that the show went straight to “KILL ME” and that’s the only piece of agency we see out of this character.

YES IT WAS LESTER FREAMON I LOVE HIM SO MUCH. Remember on The Wire where we suddenly learn that he is super legit, the most legit ever? I do. What a glorious first season The Wire had. I should really go back and rewatch that.

I LOVE THIS FREE VERSE MEMOIR PLEASE NEVER STOP IT.

I am so ashamed of myself that I didn’t recognize Lester Freamon right away. In my defense, I was distracted making dinner for three people at the time, and it’s been years and years and years since I watched The Wire. (I should pick The Wire back up. I never finished it because I got anxious about what was going to happen to all those kids in season four. I REMEMBER WALLACE.)

On the other hand, it was great to see so much of Luke Cage and Jessica. They’re fantastic together.

ANA CONTINUES TO HAVE EXCESSIVE FEELINGS ABOUT ACTOR OVERLAP: A MEMOIR IN FREE VERSE.