Simone Was Right (On the Record)

The episode ended and neither of us said anything for about thirty seconds. That particular silence, the one where everyone is deciding what they actually think before the other person says it first, and then Simone said the thing, the correct take, the reading of the finale that I had been circling for fifty-two minutes without quite landing on.

We have been doing this for a while now, the debrief. It started somewhere in the middle of us watching different things and texting one line each way, and at some point it became an in-person event with a loose end time that neither of us enforces. Tonight it was the last two episodes back to back, which felt important to do in the same sitting, and it was, the ending hit differently without a week in between. I had a whole theory about the secondary character's arc that I was fairly invested in. Simone had a different theory. Simone's theory was right.

the 'I told you so' landing in real time

I made tea. This is what I do when I lose an argument I wasn't quite having, I relocate to the kitchen and perform a useful task.

making tea for the person who was right. again.

Gerald's vine has gotten long enough this fall that it grazes the edge of the shelf below the pot, and I noticed it while I waited for the kettle, which is the kind of noticing you do when you are quietly revising your position on a fictional character's motivations without saying so out loud.

The timer was still out from earlier, I'd set it up to catch the windowsill light in the afternoon and forgot to put it away. So the debrief is documented, which I didn't plan, and Simone is mid-'I told you so' in at least one frame, which she has earned. October is good for this. The evenings are long enough to actually finish something.