Life is full of obstacles, but it’s the moments in between them that can be worthwhile.
Romany Malco took a spin in the director’s chair for A Million Little Things Season 5 Episode 5, which saw Rome bonding with Walter, understanding his condition thanks to Sophie and Gina doing whatever she could to help Dustin and Daniella.
We also saw Maggie and Gary compromise on their birth plan after some back and forth, but it may be too late for it to happen as planned.
The series is bringing barely recognizable faces from the past into the fold for some stories to show how these individuals impacted our characters’ lives then and now.
During this installment, the surprise came from the woman who hit Eddie and put him in the chair. When we last saw her, Eddie had given up his nice apartment so she and her son could stay there and get on their feet after she left her abusive husband.
Eddie’s beautiful gesture meant that she would have a home paid off for six months in Eddie’s name until she got on her feet. And to his surprise and delight, that’s what she did. How fortuitous was it that she worked at Sandborn’s administration office and had the power to place him in a class he needed for his major?
She happened to be at the right place at
the right time, a switch up from her origins of being at the worst place at the worst time and changing the trajectory of Eddie’s life forever.
Because of her awareness, it made sense that she’d seize the opportunity to help the man who gave her a helping hand when he had very little reason to before.
Sure, it sucks when someone calls in a favor and, in the interim, screws a score of other students out of the opportunity to get into a class they, too, desired and needed.
It reeks of favoritism, and it’s unfair, and as someone who has been on the receiving end of that in undergrad before, it genuinely sucks, but that’s also something not uncommon.
As a result, Eddie wheeled into this class five minutes late, and on the professor’s bad side because she knew that something had to have happened that prompted him to get added into her class ahead of other people.
She has reason to be frustrated by that and calls into question what type of strings he pulled or special treatment he received for that to happen.
On the flip side, her behavior was unprofessional, and since she had no idea why and how he got there, it was wrong of her to take her annoyance and displeasure out on him.
Eddie didn’t do himself any favors by not brushing up on the material he studied a decade ago or blatantly texting in the middle of her class. And we’re not going to pretend as if he didn’t plan to use the chair to get his way if necessary.
But he is taking this whole thing seriously, and he deserves a shot to prove himself instead of having the professor hamstring him right out of the gate.
Hopefully, they can call some truce and get on the same page, showing each other some grace because Eddie will take this seriously when he dives in. He’s on the path to something great here.
With such a small psychology class, the professor must give the impression that she can treat everyone fairly.
It’s better than allowing her displeasure to cloud her judgment or making her seem like she’s singling out the older wheelchair-using student over the others.
It’s not her intention, but to the other students, it’ll undoubtedly read that way if her hostility persists.
I’m glad Eddie tossed out the add/drop class. I’m sure the truth of how he got there will come out and curry him some favor for the professor who is judging him out of the gate. But it would be awful if he squandered this opportunity.
He’ll have an uphill battle with this professor, which may not work in his favor. He still could end up kicked out of her class or face a setback, but damn if I’m not rooting for him, even if he did get a leg up that the others didn’t.
The other part of his newly blended family had a priceless day of love, community, and appreciation. Greta was absolutely giddy over the fact that Theo included her in his “I love yous” and had accepted her as part of his family. And she and Katherine got to exchange those words too.
Dr: Anderson: I’m not sure if Robert passed our from seeing our baby come out of a vagina or actually seeing a vagina.
There’s no question that Greta is Katherine’s endgame and is now part of this family. We’ll end on a high note for this pairing despite the occasional issues between them or how unresolved some of their other problems are.
Greta and Carter’s bonding was a fun aspect of the hour, especially when he got into sharing the significance of his tattoo. He got married to his boyfriend of the time for six days because he could — it was a celebration of the fact that the LGBTQ+ community got this win of marriage equality.
In some ways, Katherine seemed like an outcast in their moment, some observer who had no idea at the time how significant that moment was for a community she hadn’t openly been part of then.
It made Katherine feel like an observer in the scene, like the kid listening to the elders relive this momentous occasion they weren’t alive to bear witness to themselves or something.
On the one hand, it was great to have Carter and Greta bonding in this way, and we get to see the community that Katherine has become a part of via these relationships that she has, and they give voice to that historical moment and those feelings.
On the other hand, sometimes it feels like the series spends too much time reminding us that Katherine is a “baby queer” new to everything, and it toes that fine line of invalidating or condescending to her because of it.
Nevertheless, Greta changing Carter’s “don” tattoo” to “Freedom” after their conversation was great.
And Greta continues to prove that she’s settled nicely into this suburban lifestyle with an unofficial wife and kid. She and Katherine are very domestic. Between the emphasis on that and the discussion about marriage equality, we could get a wedding between those two.
Katherine and Greta were solid in this installment, but the Howards needed some help, whether Gina was even aware of it.
Understandably, she feels the connection to Dustin and wants to help and give him half of what she feels he gave her, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of Rome and his issues with Walter.
She spent the entire time they were moving Walter’s belongings into their home on the phone with shelters and not actually helping. She was in and out the whole time, leaving Sophie there longer than anyone had planned.
Gina is consumed with helping Dustin, and Rome feels she needs to put more thought into what’s happening in their home.
Gina means well, but Dustin’s annoyance felt valid when it seemed like she swooped in out of nowhere with concern that felt more like pity, trying to have all these fixes for him when he wanted to be left alone.
It felt like Gina was overstepping more than a few times before discovering that Daniella was with Dustin.
Sometimes when someone like Gina tries to help, they don’t consider what it can look like and what help should entail. How long can she help? What’s the long-term plan for this?
Will she stop being of assistance once she feels Dustin has a job and lands on his feet? How will she navigate all of the red tape with any of this?
What’s the line between pity and altruism?
Gina providing Dustin and Daniella with a hotel for a few days, using up their airline miles, is a temporary solution to a complicated problem. We’ll have to see how the rest of this pans out and where this storyline goes.
It’s not a storyline that one could’ve envisioned for Gina in the final season, and it feels like it was sprung on us out of nowhere. But we shall see where it goes.
Meanwhile, Sophie and Walter are a duo that I never knew I needed. They’re fantastic together.
I let go and lived in his reality instead of trying to force him to live in mine, and it got a lot easier after that.
Sophie
More often than not, Sophie is an old soul, and she interacts well with many of the older characters.
Her previous experience with her own grandfather’s Alzheimers prepared her for helping Walter. And it feels like a natural storyline because Sophie has been inextricably linked to the Howards for some time now, finding the love, friendship, and family in Gina and Rome that Danny gets from Gary.
Go figure that Sophie is the only person Walter gets along with and doesn’t mind being around. She has a knack for this, and since Sophie has been bouncing around a bit aimlessly, this works for her.
The two of them bonding over oldies, records, and karaoke were among the cutest scenes of the hour. And Walter had some sage advice for her about dating and finding that person who makes your world stop.
The others often worry about Sophie, but it is expected that she went on a date with Lars and didn’t feel anything. It had nothing to do with Peter, nor should she have to force something to show that she was okay.
Now that Walter is around more, he and Sophie can share the screen again. They’re such a heartwarming duo, and they probably had my favorite scenes of the hour.
Sophie also gave Rome perspective about putting himself into his father’s world instead of forcing him to always be in his.
Walter had a great day reminiscing about his wife and listening to his favorite music. He got to bond with Sophie and talk about things that he loved. It would’ve crushed him if, by the end of that, Rome hit him with the reality check that Renee was dead and he was not going back home again.
Rome: Why don’t you want to stay here?
Walter: What if I wake up and don’t know who I am?
It’s not causing him any harm to let him hold onto some things when he’s in that stage, and I’m glad Sophie told Rome as much, and he heeded her advice.
When Walter said he feared that he would forget who he was when he woke up, it was absolutely heartwrenching, but that was such a beautiful scene portrayed wonderfully by Malco and Beatty.
In some ways, Maggie and Gary had the least interesting storyline of the hour.
They’re still forcing Claire and Evan into the mix when we have enough people on this series as it is, and everything Maggie does makes her come across like a teenage girl flunkie to the popular girl.
The frustration with the home-birth debacle is that Maggie and Gary were arguing but not properly communicating or addressing their stance and why they felt as they did. The situation kept taking detours into other things.
It was frustrating that Gary’s resistance to a home care birth became about him mocking or trying to devalue midwifery. Midwives are essential to labor and delivery, and they often provide so much more than a doctor can.
They’re hardworking, essential medical professionals who advocate for women and babies in a country where the maternal mortality rate is through the freaking roof.
It’s embarrassing how terrible maternal care is in what is supposed to be a first-world country. And it would be exponentially worse if not for midwives doing the work.
In all of Gary’s research, it was irritating that he didn’t stumble upon any of that because if he looked for anything other than confirmation bias articles, he’d understand that while his issues with home births could go either way, actual midwives aren’t the problem.
Hospitals are not the bastion of high-quality care.
No, Gary’s issue was that Maggie, in the twilight hour, given her high-risk pregnancy, wanted to have an at-home birth out of the blue without much thought into what it entails or any of the process or getting to know a freaking midwife or doula she’d want for the procedure.
And that was a valid reason for his frustration without segueing into insensitive jokes and rudeness about an essential profession.
Gary: Our baby is being born in a hospital, period.
Maggie: Oh, you’re putting your foot down.
Gary: You know what? Yeah, I am.
Maggie: OK Fred Flintstone my baby is being born from my body wherever the hell I choose.
And Maggie argued that she’d spent too much time in hospitals, and she wanted to consider a more peaceful environment that didn’t trigger her when having her baby, and it had nothing to do with putting her or the baby’s health at risk.
But neither of them was articulating themselves well or hearing each other, so it’s a miracle that they came to the reasonable compromise that should’ve been on the table initially to have a combination of both.
Evan and Claire’s scare did a number on both of them, but at least they came to a birthing plan month late. And the timing couldn’t be better since we ended the hour with Maggie going into labor.
Over to you, AMLT Fanatics.
Are you excited about the baby’s arrival? Should Eddie drop the class? What are your thoughts on Gina helping Dustin? Sound off below.
You can watch A Million Little Things online here via TV Fanatic.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.
