See, I don’t see it as “good time Jack”. He did come down on the kids as needed. Example, Kevin and his attitude with the coaches. I think she was overboard with Kate’s weight issue. Look how much good it did. I think Kevin’s parenting was more effective there. Where exactly did Kevin let the kids get away with stuff? IMO, Rebecca chose to be the “heavy” because that is who she is and how she wanted to play things, not a result of Jack’s parenting. I think your therapist friend is right to some degree but it is also placing blame.
I don’t see it as placing blame at all. It’s acknowledging each person’s role in the dynamic.
Jack has a history of acting impulsively to be the good guy – talking Rebecca into taking Randall, for starters. In last night’s episode, we see him taking Kate for ice cream when he told Rebecca that he wouldn’t. Even he admitted that it was poor form to bust in with the vacation cabin idea and getting the kids all excited without clearing it first. She couldn’t say no then.
Excellent episode and I have to wonder how many people might have felt personally affected by it like I did. I have three kids and it really made me think about how IMO our three had a wonderful childhood…but as they have grown and dealt with different things as young adults…how to THEY feel?
I don’t know, I feel a soft spot for EVERYONE in this show! Sure they all have some issues. Just like just about every one of us - and our family members.
Re: Rebecca not playing old well…I think this is purposeful right now. Just like we have seen more of a softer side of young Rebecca this year than last…I think we will hear more story of why she is like she seems right now at age 60 or whatever - sort of flat and sometimes absent.
Finally, I think Jack has done his share of not always being the good guy - he has had it out with Kevin for sure on different occasions. But he bounces back to “good guy” fast. It’s more his nature. I don’t fault that. Rebecca has always had a bit of a “woe is me” attitude - when the kids were younger and now. Glimpses of a funner Rebecca now and then - and sometimes MORE when she is alone with Jack - remember she wasn’t totally on board with the whole idea of becoming pregnant at the very start - she tries VERY hard, but I don’t know if parenting was her first choice.
She has a different outlook and way of relating to the world pre- and post-Jack.
What I thought they did a really good job at was showing how as a parent we have our own stuff about who we are as a person and the stuff that kids bring as people and how when the two mix it can go in a million ways…sometimes sideways…it really hit home for me as some of this has cpme to light with our children and pur challenges as a family
The way the therapist was leading in to Kevin’s “revelation,” I was expecting a lot worse. She said something about how Kevin had some very difficult things to say about Jack. I thought he was going to reveal that Jack abused him. We already knew he was a addict, so I felt the build-up to Kevin’s “revelation” was overblown. After he said it, I thought, that’s it? I thought there’d be more of a bombshell.
Anyone else feel that way?
Yes, I thought some very dark secret could be coming out.
Just started the episode. Most love Jack, but I find him a terrible husband. He comes in an announces they are all going on vacation and leaving “now” without checking Rebecca’s schedule. He then goes on to egg her on about wearing a bikini which obviously is no a comfortable look for her. Add that to the obnoxious jealousy.
I think just voicing that Jack wasn’t perfect was tough enough. He’s been elevated to sainthood in death so toppling that notion is pretty dramatic.
GT, I’ve never understood the adoration of Jack. I don’t think he’s a terrible husband, but he’s not as perfect as the family makes him out to be.
Someone doesn’t have to be perfect to be absolutely loveable and admired.
I expect the timing and way Jack died contributes to their amnesia for his less admirable traits.
I don’t think Jack became “Saint Jack” until he died. Once someone dies, especially when a parent dies when his/her children are young, I think it’s hard for the other parent to do anything other than make the deceased into a saint. What Rebecca said about that was true. Rebecca SHOULD have warned Kevin that with a father and grandfather who had drinking problems he should be aware that he might have a genetic disposition to addiction, but…
My bil passed away when his kids were in HS and college. It wasn’t an accident but it was very sudden nonetheless.
You remember the good and fun person, you want the kids to remember the good parts. Not the difficult parts. My bil was the best person, he had a million friends and lived life to it’s fullest. He also could be short tempered and a real PITA also.
I think it’s very different how I remember and grieve my BIL as opposed to my dad, who passed away 5 years ago. It’s not that I don’t remember my dad with fondness, he was a great person. It’s just different in a way that’s hard to understand.
And it’s hard to explain how the family dynamics change when a death occurs when in this stage of their lives.
That’s what I find the show doing. To me, the portrayal of Jack is through the eyes of his kids, wife and best friend. It isn’t how he was really but through their rose colored glasses.
Now I may be wrong if that is the writers perspective but that is how I think of it.
Haha, that was deep, it’s not how I usually think about the show, I watch it and enjoy the storyline and characters.
I don’t think we knew as much about genetic predispositions (or about addiction for that matter) during the childhood of the triplets.
Randall’s biological parents were both addicts.
My mother’s father was disabled by a serious accident when she was 12, then died suddenly a year and a half later without ever fully recovering. She idolized him the rest of her life, seventy-some years. I never heard her say a single negative thing, a single ambivalent thing about him. He was her ideal for what a man should be. My house and my sisters’ houses are full of his art, 80 years after he made it.
She acknowledged that was very hard on her mother. They fought bitterly through most of my mother’s teenage years, and my mother secretly got herself accepted to a college thousands of miles away with a full scholarship so that she wouldn’t have to go to her mother’s alma mater. They reconciled after I was born, and were very close until my grandmother died.
My grandfather’s early death had a similar effect on my uncle, my mother’s brother. He was 16 when his father died, and he spent the rest of his life trying to emulate or surpass his dead father, and feuding with his mother. He and my mother fought terribly, in part because they had different ideas about who their father was and what was important about him. My uncle and my cousins were a completely different lens on the absent father.
We did by the time Jack died.
^^ I was wondering about this. I calculate it was probably around 1996-1997.
We know the triplets were born in August 1980. We also know that Randall and Jack were looking at colleges so they were at least juniors, but probably seniors. So I think you’re right about the timeline @brantly. By that time, the genetic predisposition to alcohol was well known–in fact, at that time, IIRC, genetics were thought to be more strongly linked to alcoholism than it’s now believed.
I sort of confirmed this by doing a quick and dirty search on Google Scholars and found lots of articles about this in that time frame.
The triplets have said that their father died when they were 17. So I guess it was 1997 or early '98 when Jack died.
I get it that we all have flaws and Jack is presented on a pedestal due to post-mortem elevated memories, but what bothers me is that I feel the shows writers lead us to really believe Jack was “perfect” in every other way but his alcoholism. He has so many admirable qualities, but certainly flaws as well. Perhaps the characters will grow to see those flaws.