<3 Thank you for guiding me on a journey through this show again, Mark. I enjoyed it the first time, but following you through it, with your own insights and experiences, was something special. Be well.

I love the joke that Vidalia (a type of onion) has children named Sour Cream and Onion. One of my favorite weird random jokes of the show. And of course, we "met" Vidalia before she was fully introduced as a character, back at the end of season one, when Greg found her and Marty canoodling in the back of his van.



If Sour Cream is 3 or 4 years older than Steven, it means that Greg and Rose had about that much time together before Steven was born and Rose stopped existing. Which means that if Greg was 22 when he met Rose, he'd be about 40 now.

One of my favorite moments of this episode is when Shifra says the prayer of protection for Nadia. There's just such a look of serenity and contentment on her face, which is probably a feeling that is utterly alien to Nadia, but something all humans yearn for.

And now ubyl fuvg vg'f NYNA GVZR!!!!! Here we go....

V qvq pngpu gur punatvat ahzore bs svfu guvf gvzr nebhaq, ohg zbfgyl orpnhfr V jnf ybbxvat sbe guvatf yvxr gung. Abg rabhtu gvzr jnf fcrag jvgu gur crbcyr fur cnffrf ba gur fgerrg sbe zr gb abgvpr qvssreraprf, ohg V qvq nffhzr gurer jrer cebonoyl bar be gjb zvffvat gur frpbaq gvzr nebhaq.

Hell yeah episode 2!!!!!

I love how Nadia has this complex network of friends who seem very comfortable with one another and seem to really care about each other. She clashes with Maxine in a few of the loops, but ultimately, it is clear that they have a lot of affection for each other. Lizzie is a cool, down-to-earth person who listens and tries to help, and is the kind of person I think I'd really like to be friends with? Ruth is a kind of surrogate mother who has known Nadia for ages and really understands her. John, her ex, with whom Nadia has a complicated but still clearly warm relationship. Wardog and Farran, who exist in the orbit of Nadia's life who she clearly cares about and respects, even if maybe they aren't close friends. And the whole thing is so rooted in its setting that even someone like me whose experience of NYC is extremely limited (I've spent ONE DAY there in my entire life, y'all) gets a very strong sense of place.

I kind of love the scene that just follows Nadia through the party without any dialogue. For one night, she just gives in to nihilism, because if she's just going to keep getting sent back, then it doesn't really matter what she does. Everything is meaningless, and no one will remember it but her.

And then!!!!! The dying flowers!!!!! What does it meeeeeeeeeaaaaaann???????

This show packs so much into 25 minutes.

yby fnzr. V jnf fb sbphfrq ba gur cvpgherf gung V qvqa'g frr gur heaf.

Yeah, hey, I am super late to this party, but this episode speaks to me SO HARD.

I grew up with a strict mom. She was not as extreme as Mark's mom, but she was bad enough that I was riddled with anxiety and felt suffocated. When I was 17, I too tried to run away from home. I wasn't planning to leave forever or to go very far -- just to my best friend's house, 15 miles away -- but I felt stifled and like I needed some distance so that I could work through things with my family from a place of relative safety. Needless to say, it didn't work out. My dad came home unexpectedly as my friend was coming to pick me and all my stuff up.

My parents were even more restrictive after that, because they feared me trying to run away again. I wasn't allowed to go anywhere but home and school for a while. It did not make things better. On top of that, this was around the time my mother became an Evangelical Christian, and she credits her fears for my safety at this time with her conversion (and happily tells this story in front of me to this day), even though I was never a trouble maker in high school. I wasn't doing drugs or having sex or engaging in criminal activity, or any of the other things parents typically worry about their kids getting up to. I just had some pretty serious unaddressed anxiety issues that led to me cutting class a LOT during my junior year. But to hear my mother tell it, I was well on the road to ... something. idek.

To this day, I still do not enjoy interacting with my mother. I would frankly just rather not. Our dynamic has never improved, and in spite of the fact that I am now 41 years old, I still do not feel like I can trust her with anything personal. When I have even tried to discuss any of this and how it affected me with her, she goes into "pity me" mode about how she was an imperfect mother and I should forgive her, without ever making any attempt to understand my feelings show any real remorse. She's still convinced she did everything right, or if she didn't, I should just get over it, and not hurt her feelings by bringing it up.

So for me, the loudest message of this episode was, "if you are too strict with your kids, it just turns them into anxiety-riddled accomplished liars, and ultimately destroys your relationship with them".

bu zna V qvqa'g pngpu gur guvat nobhg gur nzohynapr qevire! Nyy V abgvprq jnf gung gurer jrer 6 svfu va gur svefg ebhaq, naq va gur frpbaq ebhaq, gurer jrer bayl 2, fvtanyvat gung GUVATF NER QVFNCCRNEVAT!!!

yby naq gura Znex tbrf naq dhbgrf gung yvar va uvf bja pbzzrag.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!! Mark, this is so exciting! I have missed you so much. I have really been feeling like jumping back in here, and was just waiting for a show or book I felt like I could engage with. I watched this series last year, and really enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to re-watching along with you, and maybe dragging my roommates along for the ride!

I love noticing all the little details in this episode that I didn’t pick up the first time that foreshadow things that happen later. This is such a well-crafted series/episode. And I forgot Amy Poehler was involved in making this! Probably because it’s so much darker than the stuff I normally associate with her.