State of the Shea, Pt. 90: Just a Song Before They Go (“Unconditional”)
NOTE: THOUGH I’VE NOW SEEN THE SERIES FINALE, I’VE WRITTEN THIS RECAP AS IF I HAVEN’T. SPOILER-FREE! ENJOY!
The penultimate episode of an TV series is perhaps more difficult to plan than the finale itself. How much of the script is business as usual, and how much hints that the end is near? How much time can be spent on fun stuff, and how much needs to still be dramatically engaging? Are there storylines that must be tied up before the last episode? Are there elements of the finale that would best be introduced before said finale starts?
It’s been done all kinds of ways over time, of course, depending heavily on how aware the showrunners are that the show is ending. Barney Miller, a sitcom that ran on ABC for 8 seasons, created a finale that consumed three of its final 22 episodes. WKRP In Cincinnati, a CBS sitcom that ended around the same time as Barney Miller, could only guess at its future (CBS had shuffled its place on the schedule mercilessly, crushing any long-term ratings momentum), and produced a pretty awesome final episode nonetheless.
On the other hand, The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended its outstanding seven-year run with a single-episode storyline (The TV station gets a new station manager who fires every newsroom regular except Ted Baxter). Not only did it win that year’s primetime Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series… that MTM finale was called “the gold standard of sitcom finales” by none other than Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman.
(Yes, I’m a devoted fan of all those shows and will talk about them on end with anyone willing to join me… but I can see you’re all here for TGD, so I’ll force stop myself and get back to it.)
So what did we have on the story-telling table as “Unconditional,” the penultimate episode of TGD, got started? We had Glassman housing and medicating a young drug addict (which almost sounds like a “jump the shark” moment for the show if you didn’t know Glassman’s tragic family history). We had Morgan and Park newly engaged, and in a rush to get married ahead of Eden’s adoption hearing. And we had the question of testing Steve for ASD off the table, leaving Shaun and Lea open to… what next?
If you’d read any TGD-related press this season (or simply watched the promo following “The Overview Effect”), you knew a big part of what next? was the return of Dr. Claire Browne for the last two episodes. Intriguing as that was– or was setting up to be for the finale– the other two stories dominated “Unconditional.” And if that sounds like a whole lotta nothing in the grand scheme of things, you’ve got to listen a little closer. I’ll explain…
“IT IS VERY GOOD TO SEE YOU!”
What #Shea supporter didn’t want to see an Auntie Claire visit to The Loft to meet baby Steve? It was short-lived, of course, but very fun; even the talk of the tumor in her breast was light-hearted at that point. And if you paid attention to what Shaun was saying, it was he who Claire had contacted about her personal medical situation in advance… meaning that back in the “Faith” episode, when Glassman was quietly fielding someone’s test results on the phone…? We thought it might be foreshadowing for Claire. But it wasn’t.
I don’t know about you, but I managed at this point to stash this realization into the nether regions of my brain… focusing instead on deceptively important exchanges like this:
LEA: Don’t give me that look! You’re the one who insisted on showering together.
SHAUN: I thought it would save time.
LEA: When are you going to learn, Shaunie? I’m irresistible.
SHAUN: That is very true.
“Don’t give me that look” is EVERYTHING. While #Shea Nation surely had no limit to the number of love scenes we’d be willing to take in (and we may forever be grumpy with the pajama game we’ve seen instead), once in a while the writers threw us a bone with the dialogue. And this was an unexpected joy.
But “Don’t give me that look” was so cool because Shaun’s “looks” are generally very limited in scope. But just as Shaun’s learned to decipher Lea’s eye crinkles (see “The Shaun Show” in S5 for more), Lea knows Shaun’s nuances so well now that we’re treated to this kind of fun conversation. Love it!
“Now you are being TOO nice.”
One of my big issues with the Shaun/Charlie continuum is that it peaked in the “M.C.E.” episode, and has felt somewhat aimless since then. I suspect much of this can be blamed on the abbreviated final season– both to ABC for inflicting it, and the showrunners for not adjusting better– but I felt the brief exchanges between Claire, Charlie, and Shaun were fun and very worthwhile.
(The Shaun/Charlie relationship is one of those things I’ll be discussing in greater detail in future posts.)
“I do not need a Ducati to be a badass.”
You’d better believe I took note when Lim and Claire’s sliver of “girl talk” time included not only a reinforced revelation of certain needs (sleep, sex), but a reminder of Lim’s badassery in general. Then later, we caught Lim staring at her Ducati photo with a whole lotta longing. Come on, showrunners, you know we’ll watch her literally ride into the sunset on this show with the right context…
“I don’t know what to do.”
When a mini-arc introduces an entirely new character in the final episodes of the series, there’s a legitimate chance viewers will shout Who Cares?? at the screen, irritated that precious final minutes are being gobbled away by the wrong events and/or people. There could have been (and perhaps still was) a major case of Who Cares when it came to the Glassman/Hannah story on TGD– but it’s been said multiple times that the Shaun/Glassman relationship is the heart and soul of the show, so it gets to claim priority status. With that in mind, young Hannah clearly proved to be the catalyst that neither Shaun nor Glassman knew they needed. (And yeah, even this late into the season and series, they still needed it.)
Glassman was a sad sight for most of the episode, riding a roller coaster with Hannah that he was too emotionally invested in to do safely (to say nothing of his physical state, which he continued to keep secret at this point). When he had Hannah’s dad explaining the facts of drug addict life to him– even going so far as to speculate Glassman might be sleeping with the young woman– it was clearer than ever Glassy was in way too deep.
And Shaun… ah, Shaun. The man had a lot on his mind this week already with Claire’s cancer diagnosis and then came all the feels of Glassman in trouble. But how much growth did he show with just this one development? Let us count the ways…
He felt distracted by his concern for Glassman, but rather than try to deal with his preoccupation while operating on Claire, he asked Kalu to finish (suturing her up) and left the OR to find and talk to Glassman. Not an ideal situation, but it sure brought to mind S1 Shaun, whose preoccupation (also with Glassman) caused him to make a mistake in the OR and face disciplinary action.
2. When Glassman tells Shaun he’s “not giving up on her” (Hannah), Shaun takes his concern and confusion to Lea. With her guidance, he determines this is NOT a situation where he needs to go to Lim with what he knows (because Glassman is “only hurting himself” as opposed to putting a patient at risk)... and he vows to keep it to himself. (AND HE DID! For the most part… see below.) Of course this entire conversation harkened back to when Shaun decided to go to Lim last season with his knowledge of Glassman’s mini-strokes, and Glassman was forced to retire as a neurosurgeon.
Note that when that topic came up in this conversation, Shaun STILL made a point of saying he was “right about that”... which is what, I presume, has kept him from apologizing for the way he handled it. Do you think part of Shaun’s thought process here included “how do I handle this without hurting him further”? Something that was in there, but he was unable to articulate? I’d like to think so, but I feel like I might be foisting my own neurotypical reasoning on the situation.
3. While Lim never did find out about Hannah staying with Glassman (as far as we know), Claire coaxed Shaun to open up about his preoccupation. And… funny how I wasn’t thinking about Claire’s long-term experience dealing with addiction right away. I was thinking “What will Claire be able to tell him that Lea hasn’t told him already?” MY BAD. Claire helped him over that last hurdle of what to do. Not how to do it, but what to do.
All of which speaks not only to the growth we keep talking about, but the inherent value of having trusted FRIENDS like his wife and Claire.
Even the “easy” part– trying to comfort Glassman at his lowest– was tough for Shaun, but he did it. (And I was so touched by the moment I placed it at the top of this post.)
“I don’t want to fight anymore,” Glassy sighed in regards to Hannah, so tired and sad, his crumpled form in stark contrast to Shaun’s rigid one. Do you think they were trying to mirror the final scene from “Expired” in the pharmacy storage room, when Shaun was the devastated one? Wasn’t this Shaun trying to express to Glassman “I got you” as he hasn’t really done since Glassman’s cancer battle in S2?
In any case, given what we learned later… I suspect Glassman was telling us he didn’t “want to fight anymore” in more ways than one.
“Dr. Glassman didn’t fix me. He loved me.
“I’m not like other people. Other kids called me ‘weird’... my parents didn’t want me… so that was how I saw myself. But Dr. Glassman saw that I could be more. And now I see myself as so much more… because Dr. Glassman loved me… unconditionally.
“I am still different. I will always have autism… but now I’m proud of that. You will always be an addict, even if you stop using drugs. But Dr. Glassman sees you can be more. Why can’t you?”
So Shaun said to Hannah– just minutes after sitting with Glassman, which perhaps gave him the final boost of inspiration and confidence he needed. Then, two scenes later, Hannah finally tells Glassman she wants to try rehab after all.
Were Shaun’s words really that transformative? I have to admit that skeptical me says no– he’s good, but he’s not THAT good. Nonetheless, artistic license reigns supreme, and they weren’t going to let this story carry into the finale, or end on an even more tragic note.
And much more important than that… I have to presume that the story came and went not only to give Glassman as much closure as they could on his guilt-ridden memories of Maddie, but to allow Shaun to make up to Glassman (for last season’s struggles) as best he could. Would I have appreciated a more concrete apology? Of course. But TGD has proven over seven seasons that it very much has its own ways and means for doing stuff like that– another thing we can talk about in later posts– and we can either go with it, or bitch about it.
Lord knows I’ve done both, but this time I’m going with it.
“... And I’ll keep on teasing you because I know it turns you on…”*
*I may not have this quote from Morgan just right, and I can’t find the clip on YouTube as I write this… please feel free to correct me in the comments and I’ll change it!
After Hannah’s situation was rectified and Claire looked to be on the road to recovery, St. Bon’s best was more than ready to celebrate– so much so that everyone showed up at Park and Morgan’s impromptu wedding at 2AM, no questions asked. (Gotta love the magic of TV reasoning!)
A few notes on #Parnick’s nuptials…
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this marked the third time on TGD that an actual wedding involving a regular cast member was a “last minute” sort of thing…Glassman and Debbie in S3 (City Hall), Shaun and Lea in S5 (Rooftop of St. Bons), Park and Morgan in S7 (Bar where they had 1st date). I’d say this is perhaps because formal, “planned” weddings are almost as difficult to coordinate onscreen as they are in real life, but we also had the #Shea dream/nightmare wedding that kicked off S5, and the reality TV #Shea wedding (that never happened) later that season.
Love that Lim officiated for #Parnick, much as Andrews did the honors for #Shea.
Also love that Shaun and Lea were the official witnesses; it felt like they were passing the wedding “torch” forward.
Though they didn’t show it, apparently Charlie caught Morgan’s bouquet, which was a nice touch. (You can see her with it in several post-ceremony shots, like the one above.)
Jordan might have been one of the most likely bouquet candidates, but she was too busy holding a mic as she and Hubank delivered “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” Lauryn Hill style (which featured original sections composed by Bria Samone Henderson and Wavyy Jonez themselves).
It was a heartfelt bop of a wedding celebration– you could feel TGD’s cast toasting its seven years on the air simultaneously– and it was the perfect cure for what ailed us.
For approximately four minutes.
Then it was time for the Shore Tax to be collected.
But first, allow me to briefly address two other things…
“She and her ex-boyfriend Perez text every day since Asher died.”
As Claire made her way through “Unconditional,” it became clear that (just as many fans suspected) she and former flame Dr. Kalu still harbored feelings for each other. But weren’t he and Jordan becoming a thing…?
Funny that Charlie (the unofficial gatherer of St. Bons relationship gossip this season) poised a variation of that question to Kalu as they studied Claire’s tumor. “We decided to be just good friends,” he tells her, just before that mention of the renewed Perez/Jordan text fest.
Which was all good and well… I guess… except we got THAT LOOK from Jordan as Kalu and Claire kissed at #Parnick’s wedding…
And when I posted this tweet about the rekindling that was taking place on this episode, I got this real-time response from Bria Samone Henderson…
So I’m still a little puzzled with where they’ll go here. It feels even more cut-and-dried after this episode that Kalu’s headed for something with Claire, and Jordan will end up with Perez. But is a curve ball coming? It feels too easy right now, especially for a Shore show.
And one more thing…
With ABC announcing its 2024-25 Prime Time schedule the same day that TGD’s “Unconditional” episode aired, The Powers That Be couldn’t resist putting an ad for TGD’s replacement series– a.k.a. The one that will take its current Tuesday timeslot– during a TGD episode. Of course I understand the logic behind it; the thought that some viewers will have the TV fired up on ABC Tuesday nights and will watch damn near anything they offer. But (and this is what I wrote down while watching “Unconditional”)...
THIS IS LIKE THE GUY WHO GETS A NEW GIRLFRIEND BEFORE THE OLD ONE MOVES OUT, AND THE NEW ONE COMES IN AND STARTS MEASURING FOR WINDOW TREATMENTS WHILE YOU’RE STILL SPACKLING UP THE HOLES WHERE YOU HUNG STUFF.
I know… It’s a business, Kelli. It’s called “Show BUSINESS” for a reason. Yeah yeah yeah. Now get the hell out of my apartment, High Potential (if that IS the new show’s real name).
Anyway, TGD ended its penultimate episode like this…
And also, this.
One we kind of saw coming, and maybe have for a long time… the other, not so much. But hey, they did say Claire would be back for TWO episodes… I suppose we knew better than to presume Claire and Kalu would spend the finale “simply” making life-changing decisions about their collective futures.
Are you ready for the series finale yet?
