End Unexpected

I've been hoping all along that Life Unexpected gets a second season pickup but after last night, I am even more interested in where the stories might take us next year.

First things first - we begin with Cate and Baze officially having their full parental rights to Lux reinstated and Lux no longer being a ward of the state. The three of them are officially a family in the eyes of the law. That creates happiness and plenty of tender, sweet moments between all three but particularly between Cate and Baze. Which brings us to the larger part of the episode, the impending nuptials of Ryan and Cate and the possible ruination of same by Baze's love for Cate.

After weeks and weeks of wanting the writers to eschew convention and not fall back on Cate and Baze as a romantic couple or two legs of a love triangle, I did finally give in to them and agree that the actors had the requisite chemistry and that the story could support such feelings. But I also really like Ryan and so I wanted Kate to be with him. I was basically torn in much the same way Cate herself is torn between two worthy suitors.

When it came time for a wedding to take place this week, I had no idea which way it would end. I wasn't even sure how I wanted it to end. Half way through the episode I was convinced that even if Cate didn't marry Ryan and instead embarked on a relationship with Baze, Ryan could remain on the show because of his strong relationship with Lux. But then she started acting all squirrely with him because of how she wanted her bio-'rents to be together and how she kind of felt guilty about that and I was like "well if he and Lux aren't going to remain close then Cate can't dump him because I don't want him to leave the show!"

Then Lux and Ryan had a heart to heart and I was back to accepting the possibility of Cate and Baze coupling up.

But Baze has all these issues with love and commitment and shit because of his father issues, and Dad was on the show last night to bring up all those issues and also to give the two of them a chance to deal with those issues - which they did in fantastic fashion. Baze let his dad know that he's a miserable prick who has always been mean and never told his son he loves him. And then he let Dad know that all that shit is probably partially to blame for Baze being completely incapable of telling Cate he loves her even when she tells him she loves him and asks him point blank how he feels. That, by the way, was a truly heartbreaking moment of realization that Baze hasn't come as far as we'd all hoped. And I include Baze himself in that "we all" because you could tell he wanted to kill himself for fucking up that opportunity.

Anyway, when Dad finally tells Baze he loves him, and admonishes him to be better at it than he ever was and not to wait until it's too late to say it to Cate (sorry...that was a lot of pronouns there, but you know what I'm saying, right?), Baze attempts to stop the wedding.

Too little too late on his part though because even Lux has realized that it's the righter thing for Cate to marry Ryan and so she talked her mom out of her cold feet and in the end, Ryan and Cate are officially pronounced husband and wife seconds before Baze bursts through the doors.

I think that opens us up for a lot of good stuff in a season two - triangles and, I would hope, a slightly uncomfortable and reluctant but ultimately interesting friendship between Ryan and Baze. I would, however, like to request that the writers ease up on Math's complete and utter social retardation though. I feel like they want it to be funny but it is really just so unpleasant to watch.

As long as I'm focussing attention on fashion this morning, I'll point out that Lux's maid of honor dress was inappropriately short. It's a wedding, not a dance club. Class it up, people!

And while I wasn't thrilled with a lot of her outfits (both the addoption dress and the rehearsal dinner ensemble made her look pregnant which is completely insane because she's got an adorable figure), Cate sure did make a gorgeous bride.