"Good for him"?
Good for him? Are you
serious?!
Please.
You have got to be kidding me.
I didn't want to take it there, but as they say in court, you opened the door, so I have to. I want to throw my computer out the window, but I live on the first floor.
Sigh. Here goes.
I don't think I'm the only person who ever wanted to see David and Maddie together.
That was the whole point of the show.
And
good for him? Please. Where was the emotional connection? Where were the
years of day-to-day living, working together, carrying on through thick and thin, saving one another from one crisis after another? Where was
any "relationship" in a sense other than that which could rightly be associated with the phrase "cheap motel"?
This...Other Person was a
homewrecker. Plain and simple. Please don't bestow any more dignity on her than that. She is practically a stranger, to David at least; swoops into town for a few days, conveniently
playing around while she
figures out what she wants to do about her
husband. Anybody remember
that poor bastard? Dear g*d, I practically
weep when I think of the treacherous nature of this little 'interlude.' I mean, can't she have the decency to at least try to file papers before she skips on to the next part of her life? Call me old fashioned if you want, but something deeply repels me about people who are catty, indecisive and manipulative like this.
David may have thought he was having fun, but what's doubly sad to me is that he doesn't see he was just part of some game this woman was playing while in the downturn of her life. She knew she'd be going back. She knew she wasn't going to spend any serious amount of time or stay in Los Angeles forever, and you know what, at least half intended to keep her husband available
as an option. There's that phrase again. Oh, I'm going to throw up. She was using poor Mark
and she was using David. Look at this as an equation: husband minus boyfriend equals zero. How utterly convenient for her, that she gets to shuttle back and forth like that. She still gets to have her old life when she goes home. How nice! Where's the airsick bag?
Both of them knew she was married. There's that.
After all this noise about how David for all his wildcat ways was supposedly very respectful of marriage, how he believed it should have real love and be a deep bond between people,
this has to happen. Oh, great.
David had throughout the story been very careful to, pardon the expression, not step on another man's territory. There are a few times in episodes when he makes seriously nasty wisecracks about people who break with their marriage. You can tell he genuinely doesn't like that. He looks up to marriage, perhaps because of his religion, perhaps because of his parents, or the fact that although he plays the wolf, deep down he really gives his heart rather strongly. When he finds someone who's worth it, he really does care. So for him to toss that away is a serious discrepancy with the established fact of his character, a sign of incredibly bad writing, if nothing else. It's no coincidence that most of the people who wrote for Season 5, especially the latter half of it, were brought in after the writer's strike and had no previous experience with the show. (At least as far as I understand.)
When Maddie nearly wound up with Sam, David did not wait for them to get married and then try to see her on the side. No. He threw up a serious roadblock, to try to get her for himself. Very different.
Then when she tried to be with Mr. Bishop, as appalled as David may have been on one level, he stepped back and let her do what she wanted, because he wanted her to be happy. Whatever choice she made, stupid as it was to him, he was going to let her stick with it. He even, and this is just an
incredible thing to do,
paid for her wedding.
Now, what kind of man pays for his true love's wedding to
somebody else?
Go take a look at the
deleted scene from "Maddie Hayes Got Married" involving the wedding shower and the last gift. The scene in question is the top one on the right hand column. For the second example, look
here at the scene from "Eek, a Spouse," second one on the left. From the way it was originally planned, it is
clear that what David does is, in fact,
abjectly refuse to let her go.
He is claiming her as his own.
He is, quite literally, the first man to actually put that ring on her finger. He buys her a gift (the necklace) which must be worth far more than the ring from the chapel. And when he says "this guy..." (in that cut scene), you know good and heck well he is not referring to Mr. Bishop!
Symbolically, through paying for the wedding, he is finally,
finally able to
take care of her in the way that he'd always been trying to, but failed so miserably before. When Richard was there, and especially when Sam was there, he couldn't outspend the other man. Now he could. Now David at last got his chance to supplant the other man in her life, to act as her protector in a way that normally a father or a husband would. He is showing her in no uncertain terms who
really commands the field...because
none of it would be possible without him. As she took those steps on her wedding day, she had to realize at least in some way that the only thing different from a marriage to, ahem, somebody else was the identity of the groom. I say he still loved her, and he understood she must have done what she did out of loneliness and desperation. Remember, the agency was in trouble before she left, and she'd said she planned to close it. Therefore she had every reason to think that before her son was born, she'd be out of a job. So although we all wish she hadn't done it, what she decides is not entirely incomprehensible in that light. There was a columnist for the New York
Post who said he was sympathetic to Maddie and admired her character for trying to do something to protect her son. And boy, did he get hate mail about it. It filled up more than half a page.
Also, David may have been trying to assuage his guilty conscience over the terrible things he did in "A Tale in Two Cities" and "Come Back, Little Shiksa." If she ever knew about those things, you bet that would constitute good reason to look for somebody else. She'd be completely justified. Spiteful tomcatting and felony destruction of private property are not the conventional ways to mend a broken relationship. (When David says what he says in his infamous speech about "I never left...I've got a clean slate," he is lying. He is striking back from deep pain, to be certain, but if that's his idea of a clean slate, he needs a new eraser.)
It is also a very profound statement on Maddie's part that she, twice in her life,
gives up on the dream of being married because it wouldn't be right...didn't make sense...didn't gel with anyone else but
him. That's not what she'll really say in so many words, but we know that's what is meant. Once with Sam, and once with Mr. Bishop, she tried to go to the altar, but it didn't quite have the right sense to it. So she stopped. (The first time did not go through, the second resulted in a quick annullment.) Marriage is usually considered the most important relationship in a person's life; and she got rid of two solid chances to be part of that, in order to clear the way for her to get back to David. Even she knew, whether she was fully honest with herself about it or not, where she was really meant to be. She put somebody else above even
marriage! Think about it!
No, they should not have gotten married just because of the cute little fourth-wall gesture about preserving interest in the show.
They should have been together because it was
the right thing to do.
I believe going fourth-wall at the end of the last episode was stupid. Come on. Yes, that stuff was a little funny before, and we all know they were taking a sly potshot at industry conventions, but
come on. It was a
story. End it as a story.
Back to the other issue.
Part of why the ending is so disappointing is because there is little or no showing of guilty conscience on the part of either of the two little cuckolds. After taking actions that, if found out, would clearly destroy the peace and stability of
two families, they both go to great lengths to cover it up,
like it's okay. No, buddy,
it is not okay.
When David 'sends her back,' what in tarnation does he think he's
doing? Does he think it's
good, for crying out loud? How can he?
This is the dumbest logic I've ever seen. Look at it this way.
If you were Mark, would you want a woman like that to come back to you? If you
knew she had been unfaithful, and in a manner that was not even a truly dedicated affair but almost a dirty joke, would you want to ever see her again, outside of a family court?
Not on your life! David is sending back a woman who, every time she looks at her husband and tells him she loves him, will be telling a big fat lie. It's all a huge lie. Gee thanks, nice of you!
This is so vastly stupid and corrupt I truly can't say what I think about it without probably violating some FCC guidelines. If you know what I mean.
Also, am I the only one who caught the aspect that David, far from being kind and helpful, is in fact
deeply self-serving? I mean, hello! If Mark found out what David and This Other Person had been up to,
boy howdy, would Mark have something to say about it. And "I understand and it's okay" would not have been among the words! People who get caught messing with somebody else's wife generally do not have good things happen to them. Dave's next big discovery may have been if he had hospital coverage. I think you know what I'm getting at.
Couldn't he, for goodness' sake, have at least tried to have the minimal dignity and class
not to pick her cousin? There are three billion other women on the planet! Where I come from, mess around with somebody's cousin and they find parts of you in different rivers.
Not least among the problems with this plot point is that it also contradicts with David's own behavior just prior to the miscarriage. This dalliance cannot be his way of striking back at her for the inadvisable marriage; if it is, it does not make sense, or it is not justifiable to use it as such, and here's why.
David had already forgiven her.
I'm serious. Think about the baby shower scene in "A Womb With a View." There is that simply
lovely dinner and conversation.
He
says, I mean he even flat-out
says this, "I'm thinking of settling down."
Then watch the dance scene. When they are together out on that floor, I swear, it is among the happiest looks you will ever see on their faces in the entire series.
If that is not
joy, I do not know what is.
We know that much strangeness ensued after the miscarriage. As well one might think. Crimony, the poor woman had just been through the worst trauma in her entire life; she should not have gone back to work, she should have checked herself directly into a psychiatrist's office and stayed there until she were truly able to begin to think normally again. No way she should have patched up her grief and tried to run back out there as soon as she did. That's ridiculous! I'm sorry, it's not healthy. The grief process has very specific steps and you can seriously hurt yourself if you neglect or abridge any of them. What she does is, frankly, close to untreated PTSD.
So, if David threw her over because he thought he wasn't getting enough attention from her, can't he see this must have been one of the reasons why? I always thought the miscarriage was, forgive the expression, the elephant in the middle of the room that nobody wanted to talk about. Of course she was distant and weird and tried to cut off her feelings. Who wouldn't?
There is also ample evidence that in spite of all this mess, Maddie really had made an effort to get back in David's graces, with dinners, gifts, and at least some semblence of kidding around and making jokes. And he seemed to like it, too. I believe that once (in Yr. 5) he says to her, "Pretty soon there's going to be a six-pack in your fridge." It's his way of at least implying that he'd like to have a reason to file change-of-address cards, if you catch my drift.
One of the running themes for both characters in this show was their difficulty in saying things directly. For all that we know being a wiseacre is a big part of David's personality, if he really wanted to get back to something good and meaningful with Maddie, if he truly wanted her back in his life, maybe this was the one time he should not have joked about it! Why not just simply say, "I'd like to begin seeing you again"? There! One sentence. No ambiguity. No chance for her to wriggle away, either. She would have to respond clearly and immediately with what she feels about him.
Frankly, if David was willing to seek any port in a storm for some shallow, physical fun, then Maddie's fears about him were right. I'm sorry to say this, because I love David as much as the next person. Honestly, I do. But this is so beneath him. This is so silly, just an easy answer to the dilemma, and it just stinks. It's a cop-out. Real love takes effort, dedication, willingness to stay together even during the worst times, and if you are not ready to do these things, you don't have what it takes. No love can survive one of its parties looking after themselves first.
One of Maddie's first fears about her relationship with him was that it would be about 'one thing' and not to last. Well, if this is the kind of tawdry way David would act, she was right about him. Looks like he
was 'only out for one thing.'
What a disappointment.Who says she should have accepted him as he was? What if 'what he was,' wasn't all it should be? What's wrong with anybody saying they could use some change? Come on, we're all just human beings, who is perfect? Now I've already said, yes, Maddie had a lot on her conscience and she had some changing to do as well. But why does Dave get out scot-free? That's a double standard.
They were meant to be together. The
real two of them, not this
fake business.
I truly believe this all comes down to writers who did not know the characters. And I'm half-wondering if they didn't write all this stuff before they found out the fate of the show. The whole train wreck of issues in the last half of the fifth season
sounds like stuff that would have been hashed out over the course of more episodes and other years. There are just too many loose ends to account for it otherwise.
To those of you who
think this was a reasonable way to end it, I ask you. What do you find more intellectually satisfying, what carried the bulk of time in the show, the relationship between David and Maddie, or
this other character who shows up
four weeks before the end to
kick sand in all our faces?! You don't just eliminate one of the two main characters of the show right before the end. What the hell is this nonsense? It is
treyf, it is as
wrong as the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, it is just an insult to our collective intelligence!
In your heart, you know what's right.
They both
tried to say it was over, but you know and I know this is the kind of thing you never forget for the rest of your life.
When I went out to buy my leather jacket, I tore through all the shops in lower Manhattan, checking price, style and workmanship. The one that caught my eye was a black piece with a sticker in English and German on the inside, saying the item contained "Echt Leder." Genuine leather. The true thing. The honest article. Pure in its contents, nothing doctored or omitted.
I submit to you that what Maddie Hayes and David Addison had was the real thing.
Life is hard. People mess up sometimes. People do awful things. But they get back on the road.
How are you going to ever find out if something was really worth it if you never gave it your full and honest effort? How
do you know if you never try?
Finding She-Who-Cannot-Be-Named was
not good for David. I don't care what anyone says, she was but a substitute, just a pale imitation and if David wanted to experience something manifestly better in his life, something truly satisfying on the physical
and mental levels, maybe sometimes you do have to walk the hard road and put in a little more effort. Because you'll learn more that way. I am not talking about lust. I am talking about love.
If you just want a cheap hookup to provide thrills in the here and now, you could just go to a bar any night. Stop trying to pretend. Don't you dare try to say that you want a real relationship if the same-old same-old is all you can handle. You want to play, play. But be forthright. Be clear. Don't give me five fake i.d.'s and say they're all
you.
"
But anyone who's ever had a heart, oh,/ They wouldn't turn around and break it./ And anyone who ever played a part,/oh, they wouldn't turn around and hate it!"--The Velvet Underground, "Sweet Jane"
What is so bad about change and effort? Why are grown men and women so scared of these things? Who should be, as adults, so
embarrassed to admit that every once in a while you need to take stock of your life and make some improvements? Yes, it's mighty hard to do and you'll have some regrets. But if you want to take the easy way out, hey, any half-wit can do that.
If you want something
better, you've got to
take care of it.
People can do anything they set their minds to. Hey, there are six golf balls on the moon. Things can happen!
I refuse to believe this was the best ending that could have been engineered. Not by a long shot.
A reunion between the two characters could have been done. It could have. The writing on the first three years was so good, they could have convinced me to stow away on a rocket to deep space. I believe if they had just brought those people back in, or at least
somebody with a clue, anything could happen. It did
not have to be soppy. It did
not have to be unbelievable. They didn't have to do what they did until they were written that way. Heck, they made these characters dance on the air for the first few years of the show. They could have done it again.
Stranger things have happened.
My grandparents fought like cats and dogs...for the entire 55 years of their marriage.
Please consider the
second half of that sentence.
Call me naive if you want. Still young enough to believe in love, I guess.
But
our two crazy kids at Blue Moon deserved a better shot. They just
did.
If the story meant anything to you at all, it cries out for that.
Ah, but what did the man say, once upon a time?
"
Love will tear us apart again."
Shame, that.
Shame.
?? Didn`t see any other episodes then season 1 and 2 and a womb with the view (or can`t remember anymore as I was too small) and was hoping soooo much!!! Anybody already preordered at Amazon?
