In this week’s episode, we get a peek into what Cassie is dealing with thanks to her tumor, both on a personal level and on an interpersonal level. It’s a tough episode for our whole team, but especially for our favorite synesthete as she’s forced to confront her own impending doom. It’s also, I believe, a turning point in her relationship with certain members of the team (*cough*Jake*cough*). So let’s dive in.
(One quick note before we get started: I’m changing the format of these reviews a little. Sorry. Still figuring this out. I just feel like this new format will be a better experience for you, my dear readers. Hopefully I’m right.)
Cassie
At the beginning of the episode, Eve is clearly worried about Cassie. Despite trusting the team more, Eve still feels Cassie can’t take care of herself. I don’t think Eve believes Cassie will betray them again. She just believes that Cassie is fragile and needs to be protected. That’s the thing that people do when they don’t know what to do for someone who has an illness. Eve is a fixer and she can’t fix Cassie, so she does the only other thing she knows how to do: she overprotects.
But the problem with overprotection is that it is rarely the thing the person who is sick really needs. Cassie certainly doesn’t need it. She’s much stronger than even she knows. But no one will give her the chance to prove it. Instead, they relegate her to the truck and babysitting the girl.
When Katie asks if all Cassie does is read maps, Cassie clearly doesn't like the fact that’s all she’s being allowed to do. She wants to find the bad guy, wants to help her team. But they keep treating her as if she needs to be protected. It’s incredibly frustrating to have your choices taken away from you, even in the name of protection. Sometimes especially then.
Cassie feels that Eve is basically telling her that she’s useless except for doing math. She’s breakable. But the thing is, Cassie thinks she’s breakable too. She’s not even sure she’s up to helping out the team, even if she says she is. When Katie asks if Cassie will break, Cassie admits that she doesn’t know. She’s not even sure of her own strength at this point. Which puts her very much in the same position she was in at the beginning of the series. Remember, she made the choice to betray her friends out of fear for her life. She hasn’t fully accepted that she will die someday, and until she does, she will always be in danger of betraying her friends again for the chance to live.
Oddly, it’s Katie who encourages Cassie. She tells her that Eve does trust her, since she gave Cassie the job of protecting Katie. Eve didn’t ask Ezekiel or Jake to do it. Cassie sees that as just trying to get her out of the way, but Katie points out that it could be seen as the Colonel trusting her with a more important job, one that she can’t count on the boys to carry out due to their personalities. Cassie takes this idea to heart and begins to accept that while Eve maybe a little overprotective, she does trust her.
Despite this, it's only when Cassie faces her fear and admits that she is stronger than everyone thinks, that she is able to defeat the dark heart. All of her options are taken away, all of her protection is gone. If her friends are going to live, if she is going to live, she has no choice but to face the horror that is her fear and deal with it head on.
So she does. I think when she tells Katie about her diagnosis it is the first time she’s really talked about it openly, admitting how she has to deal with knowing that she is going to die everyday. I don’t think he’s ever really dealt with those feelings before. Instead, she hid from them and the rest of the world and looked for a way to escape her death sentence. Which is how she found the Brotherhood.
At the end, after she’s defeated Katie, she says that it isn’t about wishes. It’s about need. Here is where I think she comes to another realization. She says she really needs, but faints before she finishes her thought. I think she was going to say that she really needs her friends. She has realized that without them, she is alone and she can’t stand being alone anymore. Remember what I wrote in my review of Crown:
“Now, I’m not a super intelligent person nor do I have a brain tumor or any kind of life threatening illness, but I do know that the combination of being extremely smart and having a life threatening condition is something like a perfect storm of having people not know what to do with you. I imagine that seeing and processing the world in a way that is different from what is considered normal is rather off putting to people who don’t experience the world in that way. That’s bad enough. But then, combining that with a life threatening illness, something that no one knows how to react to or deal with, that’s the perfect storm of loneliness right there. We don’t know much about Cassandra yet, but we do know that she is probably very lonely. She’s probably been treated as a freak for most of her life. So when two people show up and don’t freak out that she’s hallucinating, she jumps at the chance to join them. They are probably the first people in her life to simply accept her.”
It’s because of them that she stayed. All through this episode she said she wanted to help, but kept running away. When she finally stopped running away and decided to help her friends, that’s when she faced her fears. Because they were worth facing for her team. They rescued her. They saved her. And now she gets to save them in return.
Cassie is changed at the end of this episode. She’s more confident in herself and she’s clearly gained Eve’s confidence. And no one argues with her anymore. She’s proven herself. In the car, Ezekiel does most of the talking, telling her he can feel the smugness coming off of her (which is rich coming from the king of smug himself), but Cassie has every right to be proud of herself. She put the pieces together alone and she saved the day.
If you watch Jake carefully in the back seat, you can see that he is confused by this new Cassie. He doesn’t say anything while she and Ezekiel go back and forth, but something has changed about the way he looks at her. His look when she tells Ezekiel to leave the radio alone because she likes the song is full of confusion and assessment. He knows something has changed about her and he’s not sure what it is or how he feels about it.
This is where I think their relationship starts to turn around. She’s no longer the same person she was when she betrayed them. She’s no longer haunted by the fear of her tumor and her death. Instead, she’s acknowledged and accepted that they are part of her. Because of that, she’s become a different person. And I think that’s what Jake is realizing in that car ride. He’s realizing that she’s changed from the scared young girl she was at the beginning into a woman who won’t let her fear make her make the same mistake again. This is where he begins the process of trusting her again.
Eve, Jake, and Ezekiel
Eve spends most of this episode working pretty closely with Jake. They have developed a groove and they really work well together. Ezekiel doesn’t fit as well, but even he is willing to do as he’s told, even if he gripes about it the whole time.
Throughout the episode, Jake keeps failing when he resorts to using his brawn to try and solve problems. Any time he does that, he fails. It’s when he starts using his brain that he begins to see what’s going on and starts figuring out the puzzle. He really needs to remember that it’s okay that he’s smart and start using that more.
What’s funny is that when Jake is resorting to using muscle Eve tries to use her brain. They almost take on opposite roles when they are working together in this episode. It clearly frustrates both of them, since the problem can’t be solved with a gun or a crowbar.
Other Random Goodness
~”This is me ignoring you. Get used to it.”
~”Mathgirl’s doing one of her loopy loops.” “Don’t. Don’t call me mathgirl.”
~I love how they’ve continued the trend of Ezekiel coming up with a nickname for Cassandra (or her tumor) and she first objects then eventually accepts it.
~”Anybody here like that coincidence?”
~Jake + crowbar = funny
~”You’re very weird librarians.” “It’s a very weird library.”
~”Well 2½ with Jones.” “I’m standing right here. I can hear you.”
~I loved the way Ezekiel tested out the swinginess of the candlestick before deciding it was good enough.
~Also, Jake tripping over the chair right after shushing Ezekiel and how everyone reacts to it.
~”So I’m the Katie wrangler now?”
~”You know, Colonel you have an incredible talent for turning a bad situation into the worst case scenario.”
~”Huzzah!” John Larroquette's delivery was incredibly. The man is seriously funny.
~”I don’t need the whole real estate ad from hell.”
~*Eve points a gun at Jake for the second time in the episode* “Again?” “Are you kidding me?” “Really?”
~”You wish you had something to shoot, don’t you?”
~*Katie stabs the phonograph.* “Sorry. That was bothering me.” Again, it’s all about the delivery. Lea Zawada was amazing as Katie. Shes very good at the creepy.
~”Absolutely. I could have been dragged around on my face.”
~”You could be dating . . . whoever it is backwards country people think is hot.”
~”I can actually feel the smugness coming off your body.”
Well that's it for this episode What did you think? Do you think this is where Jake starts turning around toward Cassie? Feel free to leave me a comment and discuss.
Next week I'll be writing the review for Santa. In the mean time, I'll continue my series of writing prompts and 30 things on Wednesday and Friday.
Until then.
If you watch Jake carefully in the back seat, you can see that he is confused by this new Cassie. He doesn’t say anything while she and Ezekiel go back and forth, but something has changed about the way he looks at her. His look when she tells Ezekiel to leave the radio alone because she likes the song is full of confusion and assessment. He knows something has changed about her and he’s not sure what it is or how he feels about it.
This is where I think their relationship starts to turn around. She’s no longer the same person she was when she betrayed them. She’s no longer haunted by the fear of her tumor and her death. Instead, she’s acknowledged and accepted that they are part of her. Because of that, she’s become a different person. And I think that’s what Jake is realizing in that car ride. He’s realizing that she’s changed from the scared young girl she was at the beginning into a woman who won’t let her fear make her make the same mistake again. This is where he begins the process of trusting her again.
Eve, Jake, and Ezekiel
Eve spends most of this episode working pretty closely with Jake. They have developed a groove and they really work well together. Ezekiel doesn’t fit as well, but even he is willing to do as he’s told, even if he gripes about it the whole time.
Throughout the episode, Jake keeps failing when he resorts to using his brawn to try and solve problems. Any time he does that, he fails. It’s when he starts using his brain that he begins to see what’s going on and starts figuring out the puzzle. He really needs to remember that it’s okay that he’s smart and start using that more.
What’s funny is that when Jake is resorting to using muscle Eve tries to use her brain. They almost take on opposite roles when they are working together in this episode. It clearly frustrates both of them, since the problem can’t be solved with a gun or a crowbar.
Other Random Goodness
~”This is me ignoring you. Get used to it.”
~”Mathgirl’s doing one of her loopy loops.” “Don’t. Don’t call me mathgirl.”
~I love how they’ve continued the trend of Ezekiel coming up with a nickname for Cassandra (or her tumor) and she first objects then eventually accepts it.
~”Anybody here like that coincidence?”
~Jake + crowbar = funny
~”You’re very weird librarians.” “It’s a very weird library.”
~”Well 2½ with Jones.” “I’m standing right here. I can hear you.”
~I loved the way Ezekiel tested out the swinginess of the candlestick before deciding it was good enough.
~Also, Jake tripping over the chair right after shushing Ezekiel and how everyone reacts to it.
~”So I’m the Katie wrangler now?”
~”You know, Colonel you have an incredible talent for turning a bad situation into the worst case scenario.”
~”Huzzah!” John Larroquette's delivery was incredibly. The man is seriously funny.
~”I don’t need the whole real estate ad from hell.”
~*Eve points a gun at Jake for the second time in the episode* “Again?” “Are you kidding me?” “Really?”
~”You wish you had something to shoot, don’t you?”
~*Katie stabs the phonograph.* “Sorry. That was bothering me.” Again, it’s all about the delivery. Lea Zawada was amazing as Katie. Shes very good at the creepy.
~”Absolutely. I could have been dragged around on my face.”
~”You could be dating . . . whoever it is backwards country people think is hot.”
~”I can actually feel the smugness coming off your body.”
Well that's it for this episode What did you think? Do you think this is where Jake starts turning around toward Cassie? Feel free to leave me a comment and discuss.
Next week I'll be writing the review for Santa. In the mean time, I'll continue my series of writing prompts and 30 things on Wednesday and Friday.
Until then.
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