“Upside Down(side)” - “The Long Honeymoon”

Basically what these “Upside/Down(side)” posts will be are what I think will be the best case and worst case scenarios of how certain episodes play out. Usually, we can expect what actually happens to fall somewhere in the middle.

I will not be doing this every episode for a simple reason – most of the episodes will not have press releases/spoilers that give any indication what role (if any) Alex has in them, and the upside/downside scenarios are obvious:


Upside: Alex plays a significant role in an undisclosed plot line (e.g. Alex tries to get revenge on Haley taking that embarrassing picture in “When A Tree Falls”), or plays an untold but significant role in a known story (e.g. Alex helps out Phil in “The Wedding, Pt. 1”).

Downside: The episode joins the (unfortunately long) list of episodes where Alex doesn't even appear once (this happens on average about twice a year). Or, Alex ends up doing something totally out of character which makes her look bad (e.g. her overreactions to the possum in “The Feud”).

Anyway, so what's the upside and downside for the season opener?

Upside: In the end, Alex's family realizes that Alex is not the reason that her return coincided with the end of that long stretch where everybody was happy and everything was going well, and we get a nice touching scene to finish things (tears optional). Also, maybe they finally make a reference to her meltdown from last year (i.e. when Alex returns and everything goes downhill, someone mentions that as a possible source).

Downside: It ends with it really being Alex's fault, after all, and with a screwball ending to boot (remember how I said I wanted Alex's stories to be more serious? A screwball ending would be the exact opposite.)

My thoughts on what actually does happen will be posted sometime tomorrow (no earlier than 12:30 in the early morning, so as not to spoil things for west coast viewers).