I love the way you describe Maddie's reaction as that of a child because I completely agree with you there. I think of several scenes where you see how innocent she really is, deep down. Just a few examples: Her initial expression when she knows something is wrong with her mother in her office. Her expression just before her mother arrives for breakfast. Also, her body language when she is sitting on the bed in her parents' hotel room. She is such a little girl this episode, and being able to sympathize with her, see real pain in this "little girl," is what makes this one so memorable.
I'll be honest here. I sometimes have a lot of trouble liking Maddie, or seeing things through her eyes. She does so many cold, selfish things to David later on (Season 4) that I think I am genuinely angry with her. (And I don't mean TV character angry; I mean really angry.) That is why I like this episode so much. I, as a viewer, am softened toward her for a time.
By the way, queensgirl, loved your comments about the symbolism of David paying for her wedding here and in another thread a while back. Fascinating stuff! That's a point I would love to hear/discuss more about. Do we really have to wait until Season 4 comes out to discuss it?
--Jennifer
Thank you. As for waiting to talk about other seasons, I guess not. No word yet on when that particular box set is coming out, so why not.
Let's to your point about Maddie's behavior in Season 4. Sigh...I was kind of hoping we wouldn't get to that, I had enough of a conniption talking about Season 5, but I guess we will eventually, so here goes.
As with everything in this show, there are
at least[/b] two sides to every story. David has a good case in his favor, but I believe Maddie does too.
I think it's shown in "A Trip to the Moon" that she is running back and forth to the bathroom, getting sick.
You know what that means.
There are other ways to be sure you're "in trouble" besides taking a test. I think we all understand
that.
She did attempt to explain to David, from her point of view, what the problems of the relationship were. In her mind, whether you agree with her or not, she began to feel that there was just the physical in the relationship-- and when the novelty wore off, where would they be?
She knows the story of David's first marriage. A sudden affair turns into something more serious because he got
that girl in the family way.
And "the baby didn't make it."
The marriage ended in divorce, for an entirely different reason of course, but it was bad news and Maddie wouldn't be out of line to think it left a scar on him. She did come to know him first as the party-hard bachelor. Might be tough for her to figure out if he wants to try becoming the white-picket-fence kind of guy again.
(I know, I know, I'm getting there...
)
Back to "Trip to the Moon." Maddie actually does give David a reason for the way she feels. It may not be a reason people like, but I wish people would stop saying she did what she did completely out of thin air.
Not so.
She tells him she feels "empty" and "miserable." Pretty clear, pretty strong words, and pretty bad.
She even tells him that because the agency is going through one of its cyclical bouts with financial trouble, she is planning to
shut the company down, and advises him to
find another job.
So what does David do?
He insists, "No,
you're a disaster,
I'm ecstatic..." and so forth.
Huh? Excuse me?
That's all well and good and everything, but if you love someone, I mean really love them, and you put their well-being as next or more than your own, if they tell you they are feeling terrible, do you think it helps just to
repeat your own feelings, insist that things stay the same and nothing could be wrong, and imply the other person should stay to make
you happy while they are themselves miserable?
How long do you think any relationship can continue when the two people are on parallel tracks? When they have completely different estimates of where the heck they are at this point?
God love Dave, your heart just really goes out to the guy, and I'm not kidding. I love his character
just as much as anyone else. So please don't mistake me on this. But we see here a repeat of the unfortunate phenomenon that took down so many of his previous relationships.
He can't see the forest. There are all these trees in the way.
He has a rather one-dimensional insistence that everything should be fine in the future because everything is fine right now. Or it looks like that to him. True, it was up to Maddie to tell him what she wanted, or ask what he wanted, but when she did try to explain what she was worried about, all he does is
repeat what he just said. Static. No changes.
There's a line from a song that goes something like, "You are so impressed with the way things are going, you never stop to question why things are going so well."
In that kind of state, how's it going to work?
Maddie was faced with the possibility that either of two different people could be the father of her child. And the one she thought it was, had gone out of her life, for good.
Now, we can all talk about the fact that it really turns out to be David's baby, but at this point, it being within a few weeks of the events in question, Maddie does have a fairly logical claim on being confused. Then she sees a doctor in Chicago, I believe. I'd hasten to add Maddie herself is *not* a medical professional, so when she's told with the weeks of progress and all that means it's the other guy's, even if it's not, how does she know? People do tend to trust their doctors. Maddie did. I guess I would. Even doctors can be wrong, but she doesn't know that here. She's stuck.
Not a few people would be shocked if told they were about to be faced with the task of raising another man's child. This is not a cliche, it's a fact. Others would react a different way, and it is a crying shame Maddie didn't stick around long enough to find out, but
in the beginning (at the time she leaves for Chicago), Maddie sort of could be forgiven for thinking that this was going to turn into one huge, massive problem, adding to the burden of what she was already thinking about--possible failure of the business and loss of her job!
That is some emotional whirlwind to deal with. Her company is on the verge of closing down, and for the second time in just a few years, she is faced with the image of herself as a failure. As a
loser in the business world. That is horrible. That is some hard mess to deal with. I, for one, can see how she might want to turn tail and run. Heck, I'd be on the second floor of Creedmore, too. I don't like it, but I can see the instinct. So she runs to her family for help.
How does David handle this?
Okay, as I've said, I can see his side of it too. If I didn't, I'll do it now. I can see his point too.
But...
I know, it's not good that Maddie didn't tell him when she got there, and how long she thought she'd be gone. She confused and scared the hell out of him, to be certain. Now that's hard to overlook, and in truth, you can't. But two wrongs don't make a right, and David comes up with a handful of wrongs that are pretty darn serious.
In "Come Back, Little Shiksa," he
smashes her BMW repeatedly into a wall[/b].
Uh, hello? Where I come from, we have a word for that.
"
Felony."
In "A Tale in Two Cities," he
cheats on her. He drags another woman home from a bar. In a scene that still makes me physically ill, and I'm talking literally here, he and Bert go pick up women and go back to their place. Bert wants to leave.
David throws the keys at him.
Uh-oh.
I'm having a tough time writing this. Really. I am.
For one thing, how in blazes do you dare get angry at someone for looking for another partner when you've already tried to burn them out of your memory? What is this pot-and-the-kettle nonsense? Why is it okay for David to actually cross the line and be unfaithful, but no one feels any sympathy for poor Maddie when she looks for another relationship? If anyone tries to say it's okay for him, but not for her, I'm sorry, that's a double standard, and patently sexist. It just is. No two ways about it.
And where do you get off
crashing somebody's car? That is insane. There are no other words for it. Frankly, insane.
The crack-up is done at a point long before Maddie ever meets the man on the train. At this point, all she had done was go out of town for a while. Yes, she should have called. Should have explained. Should have come back a lot sooner. A lot of things! But I can't conscience what David does. No. That is not fair either.
Key contrast here: her idea of getting the past out of her system is getting married. She wanted, even in a strange way, to make a secure home for herself and her kid. Even if it was a dumb thing to do, there was some kind of reason behind it.
David? He just got drunk, again, and he got mad, again, and he decided to destroy her memory.
Well then, I'm sorry, shut up and stay destroyed. Fish or cut bait. Do you value being with somebody or not? Then stick to them. If it's too much for you, break up, and don't come back. Simple.
If Maddie knew about the other woman, and I think if memory serves me that David
actually leaves her a message about it, you're darn skippy she would have been justified in thinking about somebody else. Yes, her parents throw a party and she goes to dinner with somebody, but unless I'm mistaken, and this is a technical but important point, David crosses the line, Maddie does not.
If she had gone home the day after her stupid little dinner out, and they had each told each other the truth about what happened, whom do you think would have the moral high ground?
David was faithful to her for, I think, a few weeks.
There it is. I said it. It kills me too, but there is the fact.
Now, if you are yearning for
marriage, which he hinted he might be, then if you can't handle one or two months of hard trials, how on Earth are you going to get ready for 50 years?
Compare Maddie in Chicago, listless and depressed, sleeping all day, with her parents literally having to push her to go anywhere and do anything, with David's highly charged binges in the party scene and then his plunge into redemption through trying to get ready for the baby. While his second course of action is very touching, it's also inconsistent. He was good and ready to stay angry until he found out that she was pregnant. What would he have done if he had not found out about that until she came home?
He even tried to get that girl from the bar to see him again.
She said no.
What if...?
You get where I'm going. David was
this close to being so bitter that he plunged back into the old world without a second thought. It takes the news of the child on the way to really shake him up.
Frankly, I was
very frightened by most of David's phone conversations, and I can see why Maddie would be too.
He vacillates, within the same conversation, often within the same
sentence[/b], between begging and pleading for her to return or at least talk to him, and then screaming in fury because he's so frustrated. One minute it's "I miss you," and then it's, "It's all a bunch of ****." What? I feel terrible for him in one way, but it's hard for me to hang on to this sympathy when he returns fire for fire.
Does he ever tell her about the car? I mean, I don't remember him doing that, somebody correct me if he did.
But if he didn't, that makes it even worse. He leaves her with not only ruined property but the extra insurance burden. Anybody think about that? Unless he confesses, he has just stuck her with who knows how much of an increase in rates, because self-inflicted damage looks horrible on your record, and then of course she might have had to buy another car. This is mind-boggling. It's really hard for me to think well of his character after this.
Adding to the problem is that he does both of these things before his famous talk with Alexander Hayes in "Father Knows Last." Before!
Where, in his plea to her father, was one word about all the problems he had? "I was unfaithful and I smashed up her car." That's kind of important.
Now, I know he is regretful, deeply, but still, fits of anger like that don't just go away. If he truly wanted her to come back, so they could be together, he was going to have to work on that contradiction problem--the urge to follow divergent paths when you are confused or frustrated, first misbehave and then try to cover it up--as well as the anger problem. When one swings between two extremes like that, it is a serious issue.
I almost want to throw something through the t.v. screen during that point later on when he makes that "I've got a clean slate" speech.
Uh,
no you don't, buddy.
So Maddie, tired, confused and alone, was easy pickings for some stranger who 'swooped' into the picture, when she was at the lowest point in her life.
Think about it this way. Mr. Bishop liked her
immediately and
unconditionally. No fights, no making fun of her. He just talked to her, never put any pressure, right away made her feel safe. He only saw the good side of her. No questions asked, he was immediately ready to help her take care of the kid. (Remember, Maddie expected to shut the agency doors when she got back to L.A. So if she stayed with David, the hard reality is, it's bad news trying to raise a child when
both parents have no jobs.)
Contrary to Dave, he did not put her through two years of up and down wrangling to finally show how he felt about her. He only just met her, and already he said that he loved her. I don't know how true that could be, but there it is.
I know, I know. We love David and we feel so terrible for him because he wanted to backtrack and get ready for the child. He wanted to mend his ways. But maybe in Maddie's eyes, she was already torn in so many different directions, this was close to the end anyway.
Also, and this is perhaps the least prominent point, but didn't David know before she left that Maddie had rejected some kind of marriage proposal from him? In "Father Knows Last," he makes a reference to, "I asked her to marry me. She said no." If that's true, he had to know, at least on the immediate level, she was not coming home to send out the invitations and order the flowers.
Very sad all around. An unending parade of Bad Things to Do. But I'm getting tired of people saying that only David had been through the wringer. Maddie had too.
Callous? Cruel? Not always. Not everything.
Sad. Lonely. Defeated. That's more like it.
She did say she loved him, and I believe she meant it.
Remember that for the second time in her life, she
gives up on marriage to go back to being with David. Her marriage to Walter was annulled in a few weeks. She gave up. No one ever thinks that was hard for her too. But it must have been.
Okay, I've said my piece. I may get hate mail, I'll go mow the lawn, I don't care. But I got it off my chest. Good.
It would have taken a mighty effort, truly superhuman, for these people to get their heads around right and get back together. But, like I said, six golf balls on the moon...things can be
done.
If both of them had apologized for their sins, and yes they both have some pretty bad ones on the ol' conscience, and truly redirected their efforts toward digging up and preserving the incredible love that had been in their hearts...
Who knows.
"
Look in my face. My name is Might-Have-Been."
Maybe we should start a thread somewhere that states "Discuss season 4 and 5 here" since season 3 topics should be open soon! 
