“Sundown, You Better Take Care” (“Lake Life” Recap)

OK, it was an eclipse and not sundown, but the show used the most obvious song in the ending so I had to come up with something else.

I have very mixed emotions about Alex's story tonight. Yes, it was a bonus that we actually did get a meaningful Alex and Ben story tonight. But I felt like Alex was jumping the gun a bit about suddenly and already finding several faults with Ben (hey, I actually saw something coming for a change).

And I'm not sure what to think about seeing all of her self-reflection about as to why she was pushing away from him (and other guys in the past). Will this become a theme for Alex this season? I'd like to see it happen, but, as usual, since it's Alex I'm not holding my breath.

And I sort of wish Alex was going to stay with Ben on the island when they found out the little ducky boat wasn't going to hold all five of them (actually I think Alex was lucky to have not fallen out of it herself – it looked like Haley, Luke and Manny had already taken up much of the space). They had to do that of course in order to bring the family back together for the big ending¹, but it would have at least let me think that the two of them might stay together for the whole season after all. And it made Alex look a little bit selfish again, and you know I don't like when that happens.

But for now I still have my doubts about Alex and Ben staying together (assuming leaving him stranded on that island isn't the show's way of killing him off – given this involves Alex I wouldn't put it past them to do that), but at least they made it through the first episode, I think.

Now for a couple of random thoughts:

Again with a mode of travel being stolen from Alex and her family? We just went through that during “All Things Being Equal”. Alex needs to start traveling alone more often. At least this time Alex had a defense for not seeing that coming – she was understandably more focused about Ben than seeing the wool being pulled over her and the other kids' eyes.

And are we going to see more tension between Alex and Claire about Ben? As I noted he's not in next week's episode, but there's another possible talking point about Alex and self-sufficiency.

I believe this is also the first time Alex got a (semi) private camera scene in a season opener.

Alex's Line Of The Week: ”It's not that I want to be mean to Ben – he can just be so annoying sometimes. And I know nobody's perfect, but does that mean I have to ignore all of his flaws? Or, is the issue me? Am I just looking for something that doesn't exist? Am I even capable of loving someone unconditionally?” It was between this introspective quote and her line about Luke needing help opening the bathroom door, and since I piled onto Luke the last two episodes from last season I decided to let him off the hook to start things this season.

And the line I did choose was from Alex's strongest moment tonight.

Well, hopefully I can fall asleep tonight for more than a few minutes – this cough is driving me up a wall.
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¹ Or maybe not – it's not as if Alex hasn't been left out of big family ending scenes before...