"You're just not a great bet to invest too deeply in."
Not a Great Bet
This episode starts with a nostalgic return home for Gretchen, when she sets out to meet her new niece, by the way, it's a bit weird we know nothing of Gretchen's family other than one scene long ago when Jimmy stood up to her parents, but it looks like that might change. Anyways, she reminisces about the creepy teacher, her adolescence and even starts to get close to actually repeating it, with real teenagers which if it wasn't for her mental instability would be flat out pedophilia.
She talks to her parents saying she's on the way but they ask her to go by the house, so she decides to visit her old room and her old hiding spot where she finds old vodka and cigarettes, which she for some reason decides to give a try. She also finds an old photograph of herself and a little girl with clear signs of having gone through chemotherapy.
She decides to look Heidi Rasmullen (Girls' Zosia Mamet) up and finds out she didn't die but she got better and revived a local roller rink, so she decides to avoid the hospital and goes looking for her. They have a beautiful reunion, a drink, and Gretchen apologizes for ghosting her after she got really sick (which is too awful even for Gretchen), then they go down memory lane into their old abandoned mall where they reminisce about high school and corrupt a few teenagers that worry about the capitalist system.
"You guys are the worst teens ever!"
And when I say corrupt I mean, force them to drink, to do things they hadn't even thought about and Gretchen even comes close to blowing one of the teenagers off, which was honestly too creepy for my taste but maybe it's the lowest rock bottom they could find? I don't know, I still think they went way too far. Thankfully, the cops show up so they run away, they crash the car and have to walk home, which gives them a chance to really talk.
"You lived long enough to get wrinkles!"
Gretchen proposes to move back but Heidi says she doesn't want her to, that they weren't really friends, which is in a way a relief because otherwise what Gretchen did was downright cruel, but also it's worrisome for our beloved messed up Gretchen. Heidi tells her after eighth grade they weren't really friends anymore, that it might have been because of her family issues but that she started changing her personality according to who she as with she says pretty soon there was no real Gretchen (which is still the case in a way). The most heartbreaking thing is that Gretchen herself seems genuinely surprised about this, was she really so convinced all of that had happened? Heidi closes it up with some heartbreaking stuff saying she's just not someone to invest in, which has to really hurt, especially after Jimmy.
"Everyone liked you or wanted you, but no one knew you."
Gretchen is stricken but she's in denial and asks Heidi if she wants to get to know her now, Heidi says she has a life now and she's happy so "no, thank you". Gretchen, of course, lashes out at her and runs the other way. She goes to the hospital to meet her niece and there is a sweet moment with the baby but she decides not to go in the room, I'm not sure if this means she just couldn't be her family Gretchen right now, or if maybe she's done with shape-shifting, but I really hope it's the latter.
Which brings us to one of the bigger mindblowing moments of the show in a while, at least for me. I remember moments where Gretchen changed her ways depending on who she was with, but we all do in a way, I just thought it was the normal shift most do when they're with their parents or at work, but now this is shown as an actual huge problem, she had false memories? was she trying to convince Heidi? Because the former is much more worrisome, and it's the one that's looking closer to the truth.
Gretchen who is always down with accepting her flaws is discovering new ones, and in a way so are we, and this is one of the most brilliant things this show has ever done for me, the fact that it can in just one moment make you revisit every scene where you could have figured out Gretchen was far more damaged than we thought, and it's not done in a cheap way, it has never been obvious and yet it makes so much sense that I can't think they chose it as a random twist, this is damn good writing. Speaking of which, I always trust these brilliant writers to be able to dig Gretchen out of this hole, but right now it's all looking pretty bleak.
"No, thank you."
What do you think? I look forward to your comments.
