State of the Shea, Pt. 67: All Apologies (“Sorry Not Sorry”)
That “sorry not sorry” thing– it’s a toss-off of the times; that kind of thing my college-age kids were raised on, but not myself. I’m more than kind of person who apologizes too much… You know, saying “sorry” when I’m stepping 6 feet in front of a person because I’m afraid I’m blocking their view when I’m clearly not. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to use the term facetiously. (At least, not out loud.)
Nor would it occur to Shaun to do that, and that’s exactly why titling this episode “Sorry, Not Sorry” was a stroke of brilliance. I presume the credit for that goes to the episode’s scriptwriters (Tracy Taylor and Sam Chanse), but whoever it was managed to capture the literal feel of Shaun‘s impassioned speech to Lim– that he was still not sorry about saving her life, but did understand they were many other things to be sorry about. And he is and he perhaps has been for a long time now, but through no real fault of his own could not all the dots lined up in a way to successfully underscore the sorrow of the situation.
(Taylor wrote S5’s “The Shaun Show” and co-wrote “Cheat Day” for those keeping track of such things; Chanse’s most recent contributions were co-writes on the S5 episodes “Dry Spell” and “Crazytown.”)
So I hope you don’t mind if I riff off this whole sorry/not sorry thing for the duration of this post… I think it fits, given “the stellar stand-alone story, beautiful long-awaited conversation, frustrating turn of events... and a few head-scratchers” that I wrote about when promoting this post on Twitter.
And if you’ve no clue what I mean by all that, give me a minute…
SORRY… that I have to applaud the reality of the episode’s date rape storyline.
For it shouldn’t be the story of so many women… but it is. And for this, I give special credit to the episode’s director Bosede Williams for clearly bringing both POTW Toni’s and Dr. Morgan Reznick’s traumas to life. Toni’s situation was illustrated from the moment she staggered into the ER; a lurching, out-of-focus POV shot that put us immediately on edge as much as she was. And while we thought we were seeing her story (told in flashback across the episode), what we actually got from her was a series of verbal responses that must hit so close to home with other victims of sexual assault – particularly those who have ever weighed the options with regards to bringing up charges. The rape kit scene that we eventually witnessed was a harrowing one as it showed how invasive the process of completing that kit can be. But it was imperative to show it. Such a sequence has probably turned up on numerous other dramas dealing with sexual assault, but it was the first time I’ve seen it, and it helped me understand the process so much better than simply talking about it. The “Are you ready to continue?” line being asked step-by-step, until it sounded so far off you could tell the whole thing was an out-of-body experience for her… so provocative and powerful at the same time. Big big props to Williams for her thoughtful additions to this entire story… And I haven’t even gotten to the Morgan part yet.
NOT SORRY… that Morgan’s revelation led to Toni’s agreement to the rape kit, or that it showed Park a new side of his ex.
Morgan’s had her turn of being the odd character out in certain episodes thus far this season, but this sharing of some pretty serious backstory was a worthwhile wait. By giving Fiona Gubelmann (the actor who plays Morgan) some darker, lowlight extensions to change up the look of her hair, the flashbacks successfully created the terrifying feel of the assault without revealing whose assault we were actually talking about… Until we got the shot of Morgan, looking at herself in the mirror, bloodied and bruised, and, in that moment, shattered.
To complement those sequences we have the entire layer that both the backstory, and the current one, create for Morgan. It was no surprise that park had never heard of Morgan’s rape in “all their time together” because her vulnerability has only shown itself in dribs and drabs throughout the series. Perhaps it’s a big part of why Park decided to end things with her, and maybe it will play into whatever happens with them going forward. Isn’t it amazing what finding a way to help another human being can do for the people from which you expect the least? Kudos to Fiona Gubelmann for showing us the side of Morgan so convincingly.
NOT SORRY about the Shaun/Lim final scene AT ALL.
For that scene alone, I give big credit to Taylor/Chanse. The road to a heartfelt apology has been anything but smooth for Shaun, much of which was through no real fault of his own. (There were plenty of us wondering at times what sort of apology was necessary– or at least wondering why Shaun was bearing the brunt of Lim’s rage.) And as we all know, the buildup of conflict doesn’t always find its way over the top of the hill in a satisfactory manner on TGD. But in my opinion, Taylor and Chanse got it right– just Shaun coming to Lim with a bucket brimming of realizations, explanations (VERY glad he told her about the parallel he drew to her and Steve), and admissions…
Here’s how it came together for Shaun in this episode, scene by scene:
A “medicine only” relationship with Lim means his efforts to simply chat amiably with her (not easy for him to do with anyone outside of his friend circle in the first place) are unsuccessful.
POTW Naveen has a surgical sponge left inside her from a previous operation that was wreaking havoc internally; she began arguing w/partner about it almost immediately.
He went to Lim hoping for advice, but it was immediately difficult to “stick to the medical,” as Lim requested, and things didn’t get very far at all. (Technically she was right– Shaun’s now an attending and should have brainstormed for solutions with his team first. But the ability for him to come in and spitball with Lim first was the privilege he had, but no longer did.)
He went to Glassman next, coming up with a solution he had to (grudgingly) get permission from Naveen’s wife to carry through.
In what seemed to be a lack of confidence, Shaun pleaded with Glassman to be on his team for Naveen’s hysterectomy.
Once the surgery was in progress, Shaun found himself with a possibility of doing more than just preserving Naveen’s life– he might be able to preserve her uterus after all.
But his attempts at ShaunVisioning an alternate plan failed, undermining his decision-making ability and leaving it to Glassman to put Shaun back on his original course.
Afterwards, Glassman senses an opportunity to draw analogies between the situation at hand and the superficial truce Shaun has with Lim. He pokes gently, and despite Shaun’s continued maintenance that the relative silence between he and Lim is fine… we can see that Glassman’s words have a stronger impact than they have in the past.
“I was so focused on defending myself I wasn’t thinking about what you were going through…” Flora (I think that was the wife’s name) is who said it, but it resonates with Shaun the most.
When Shaun went into Lim’s office near the end of the episode and said “I need to talk about your surgery,” my first thought was Oh, no, don’t lead with that! Except… I thought he was referring to her (rejected) reverse paralysis procedure. What he meant was THE surgery, the one from “Afterparty” at the top of the season, the one that saved Lim’s life but also changed it so dramatically. And what followed was the cascade of personal revelations that must’ve hit Shaun like a ton of bricks, yet with painstaking care he unveiled them to her. The apology for “other things,” the acknowledgment that his decision saved her life but also caused her harm, the awareness that the life he saved has been “very hard” for her ever since… he even brought up missing her and her friendship (which was the last straw if you were trying not to cry during this scene). It was beautiful and thoughtful and emotional and every other adjective ending in “L” you want to attach to it. So big, big props to scriptwriters Taylor/Chanse, and (of course!) to Freddie Highmore and Christina Chiang for handling those lines with the care that they did.
BY THE WAY, NOT SORRY to see Lim’s sex life return…
But SORRY that it still feels rushed to the point where it now feels like the complete barometer of her happiness. Couldn’t they have shown us a scene with Lim and Clay affectionately meeting for that very same breakfast discussed at the top of the episode, and left us with that crucial feeling that she is “in a good place” (as she eventually told Shaun)? I can’t help but feel like they were compelled to make it clear, she’d had the proverbial whole enchilada for the first time since being attacked (sorry, breakfast burrito) and THAT is the reason for life being so much better.
(You can come on at me for sounding too old-fashioned with that statement, I don’t care. It’s just that part of me that gets wrankled by the notion that sex is the be-all and end-all for defining our entire state of mind. Had Clay been around for more than five scenes before this, maybe I’d see it differently. It just felt like TGD had a checkoff list for Lim’s acceptance of her paralysis, and they were just going through episode by episode with the goal of checking everything off before the winter finale.)
SORRY to see that Jordan/Perez relationship take the turn that it did.
I was willing to go along with some sort of slow-burn possibility between these two while he got his life in order, but Perez’s selfishness is really pissing me off now:
He strings her along– “research projects,” hanging out together, telling her what a wonderful, amazing person she is (in “Hot & Bothered”), etc.
But when she calls him out, he gives the full-on bullshit line “any special friendship is a beautiful gift” (yes, I’m paraphrasing).
She decides to call his bluff and move on (via a date with someone that is not him); he concurs…
All the way until he sees her looking smokin’ hot en route to that date, at which time he all but blocks her exit from the locker room and drops the “what was that/I don’t know” kiss on her.
To be clear, I’m not faulting the writers. I’m faulting one character (Perez), and empathizing with the other character (Jordan). I am still definitely intrigued with where this is going, but like Asher, I’m worried about Jordan. She’s now stuck in a situation where she feels great compassion for her “friend” Handsome Dan Perez, but at the same time can’t help falling for him. And that could be at least partially on her, had she not made an obvious effort to tell him (in so many words) look, I feel for you, but I’m moving on. Then came that damn kiss. His motives were obvious– call it staking his claim, making his feelings clearer (ha!), or even peeing on her leg, to bring it back to Morgan’s thoughts of Lea in S3. It was reckless, and unfair, and frankly, I’m giving a lot less of a f*** right now about his struggles with sobriety. Bottom line is he’s dragging a good woman into this with him, and I don’t like it.
(And this would be the perfect time to say where is her wing woman Lea when she needs her… except as you all know, Lea wasn’t there at all in this episode. It was the fiirst time she hasn’t been seen in an episode since S3’s “Sex and Death “, at least that I can recall. so let’s talk about that.)
SORRY Lea was not in this one…
And that it felt okay to leave the #Shea fertility matters on “pause” for a week while he and Lim progressed towards amends.
Because the episode was great in so many ways, I truly want to give Taylor/Chanse a pass on this matter and say I prefer leaving Lea out entirely to simply dragging her in for a couple of “cheerleader” scenes as Shaun pieced together his thoughts about Lim.
But then I saw an idea proposed by longtime reader TONY that even a simple line or two from Shaun early in the episode, stating that Lea was taking a personal day (to come to terms with the Asherman’s Syndrome diagnosis) would have made more sense than keeping that development out of the episode completely. (Perhaps you had a similar thought; I just happened to see Tony’s idea first.) So I DO think there were ways to interweave the new #Shea developments that wouldn’t have made it feel so much like the episode was being shown out of sequence (to reference another reader’s thoughts) with the lack of reference to recent events.
Speaking of interweaving (or, NOT doing so)...
SORRY that Shaun’s POTW ultimately needed a hysterectomy– crushing any dreams of pregnancy and childbirth for the woman– and not a word was uttered by Shaun about the similar feelings his wife was having…
Not to patient Naveen, not to her wife, not to Asher, not even to Glassman. This from a man who routinely overshares, especially to Glassman, and brought up his and Lea’s fertility issues to a POTW as recently as the previous episode.
If Taylor/Chanse opted to leave even the Lea references out of their episode because the Shea situation felt too “big” to come up alongside the Shaun/Lim situation– even in the slightest– I suppose I can understand that. But I wish the episodes could’ve been structured so that the events of “Sorry Not Sorry” didn’t immediately follow an episode that ended with a devastated Lea sobbing in Shaun’s arms. Or, that Shaun could’ve been able to come to the conclusions he did about he and Lim without a POTW that had a situation hitting so close to home. I still feel like the pros of this episode greatly outweigh the cons, but those “cons” were like paper cuts– almost imperceptible on the surface, but damn can they hurt.
NOT SORRY, at least on the surface, that Andrews and Villanueva got a medical case of their own…
It was another one of those unique character pairings that we’ve seen often in S6 via the season opener “Afterparty” and also in “Hot & Bothered.” It was especially unexpected with Villanueva being a recurring character, not a regular (though clearly an important recurring, given the role her arc played in the S5 finale and S6 opener).
But, SORRY that it had an ambiguous ending– was there an implication that something romantic might be starting between these two? For the record, I don’t think so. But if not, what was the point of this THIRD Patient of the Week storyline? (Especially when we were hoping to see some #Shea follow-up?) Was it a palate cleanser for all TGD fans who say there’s too much #Shea screen time? (Oh yes, they’re out there.)
There’s at least one time before that TGD had a little bitty subplot on an episode that felt like borderline filler… The one I’m thinking of was the S3 episode where Lim got caught up in the whereabouts of a young girl roaming St. Bon’s because her mom had just had a baby and she didn’t feel important anymore, or something like that. You can recall the synopsis of all that in the comments if you like, but it was a sidetrack to absolutely nowhere Lim so I just don’t consider it important enough to remember. My point is, this was one of those times when I felt like the time could’ve been spent better in any number of ways.
Sorry, not sorry that I said that 😉
What did YOU think of “Sorry Not Sorry”? The comments section below is eager for your input!
