“Life Is Demanding Without Understanding” (“Finding Fizbo” Recap)

(CAUTION: This post contains whining paragraphs which some readers might find uncomfortable and could cause stomach discomfort and involuntary rolling of the eyes. And I use an Alex quote which contains the word “butt”. Guidance is suggested.)

This time, it turned out that the wild card was an Ace, as Ben's appearance (albeit only a second hand one) was about Alex's romance with him.

It wasn't turned into as big a deal as it appeared it was going to be, as Alex, in spite of Haley's encouraging words (in another in a lengthening list of excellent scenes between them), still couldn't come up with the nerve to mention it was Ben whom she is seeing.

While as far as tonight goes that was disappointing, it does set up the possibility of a big scene later on if and when her family finds out. I just wish I didn't have to put that “if” in that sentence – if it was anyone else but Alex we're talking about I feel I wouldn't have had to – we could count on there being a story. With Alex, who knows?

Which, oh by the way, gets me to this rant (hence the “eye rolling” advisory):

As much as I should be happy about getting an unexpected Alex story 2 weeks in a row, in a way it's infuriating. Does the person(s) in charge of writing the plot synopses have so little regard for Alex that they just arbitrarily decide to ignore her? Look back at the press release for tonight's episode – even though Alex is very much a part of the story about Manny's play (how he wrote characters that were very similar to his female family members), she wasn't even mentioned (but Haley, Claire and Gloria were). I'm beginning to wonder if Alex were to drop dead in the middle of an episode (hopefully I don't end up foreshadowing something) that it wouldn't even be mentioned or even hinted at ahead of time.

I've often felt that over the years Alex is often little more than an afterthought to more than one person involved with the show, but even by those standards ignoring her story in back-to-back weeks is ridiculous.¹

Maybe it's just as well I'm sick right now – if I weren't numbed by cold medicine I'd probably be in danger of turning this into an NSFW post.

Alex's Line Of The Night: ”I'm like a moth to a flame, if the flame is an underachieving man-child with a Tasmanian devil tattoo on his butt.” Still better than Reuben (is he even old enough to have a tattoo? I'd bet on Wile E. Coyote if he did).

She also mentioned something about motorboating, but I'm pretty sure that was a (sexual) reference that went over her head as well as mine (and I'm not about to hit Google to find out about it).
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¹On the other hand I should be thankful that Alex still has something going on – Luke has disappeared the last 2 weeks (as I've noted that's happened to Alex a couple of times in the past), and Lily's been reduced to a one-and-done role, at best, every week (but that's another rant for somewhere else).