“Every Time I Get My Hopes Up, They Always Seem To Fall” (“Written In The Stars” Recap)

There's a rational part of me that wants to think that maybe what happened to Alex tonight was for the best: Professor Fennerman is much older than her (even more so than Ben¹, and a lot of people felt Ben was too old for Alex) – he's probably too old even for Haley. Plus would we really want a romantic interest for Alex to hold her academic fate in his hands?

But that rational part of me is losing big time to the irrational part right now. And here's that recap.

I can't blame Alex for misinterpreting her professor's words over the phone – any girl who heard what he said would probably have thought the same way and headed right over to the campus to try and be with him.

But, from behind the fourth wall, I knew even as that scene was unfolding the night was going to end with poor Alex having her heart ripped to shreds yet again. And that's just what happened.

I'm not sure why I felt a little surprised that Haley and the professor were back together – that was the most logical ending but for some reason based off his words to Alex I thought we'd see him with someone else from CalTech.

Now I'm left to worry about Alex's state of mind again – we didn't see it but I'd bet she had a real ugly cry after she left the scene. And, even though I'm not mad at Haley (Alex denied she had feelings for the professor earlier, so how could Haley have known Alex really did?) I doubt Alex will be as forgiving, and that may be our best chance for a big story for the rest of the season – how does Alex cope with the fact she has feelings for someone who is now her sister's boyfriend? How much resentment does she feel towards the two of them, and how will any resentment manifest itself?

Most of the misunderstandings tonight were of the wacky variety. Sadly, this misunderstanding wasn't one of them. Even more sadly, that seems to be par for the course for Alex.

For those waiting for Alex's line of the night, I'm sorry but I'm going to disappoint you – watching her silently see a (short-lived) dream of hers shatter spoke much, much louder than anything she actually said tonight.

It will be interesting to see if there is any follow-up next week. Logically, since next week's episode was supposed to air this week there shouldn't be, since in theory anything that goes on in that episode happened before tonight's episode. But if the order in which these episodes actually aired was as intended, maybe we'll see some fallout.

I may or may not say more about tonight over the weekend – you can probably guess what that post will look like.
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¹ Actually, in real life there is less than two years difference – Joe Mande (Ben) was born on March 16th, 1983, while Chris Geere (Professor Fennerman) was born on March 18th, 1981. Ben is now 27 (seven years younger than in real life) - while they have not said how old the professor is, if the character's age is even close to real life then there seems to be about a 9-10 year difference between the two characters.