“Maybe I Think Too Much But Something's Wrong” (“Royal Visit” Recap)

I guess it's fitting that one of the stories tonight involved sports, because tonight's Alex story felt like a big game where someone dropped the ball, leading to a painful loss for a favorite team.

I said earlier that tonight was probably going to be the last big story of the season for Alex, and it just fell totally flat.

Let's count the ways things went awry tonight:

1) I haven't watched the movie in years, but at the end of Speed I seem to recall it was mentioned that relationships based on life-threatening situations (a runaway bus hostage situation, or, tonight, a toasted bagel induced fire) don't last¹. And Bill turned out to be almost a textbook case of being a rebound boyfriend, and we've seen how that never works for Alex.

Not to mention that scene made Alex lose a lot of credibility in terms of being alert around cooking appliances. The headphones didn't help – fire alarm beeps² mean things, Alex! And I wonder how much hot water she's in at CalTech for her carelessness.

Of course, given how clueless her family can be sometimes, her going back to her dorm instead of home may have saved her life?


2) The lunch was a bigger disaster for Alex than The Towering Inferno³.   First, she had to find out her professor idol had his major theory debunked, then make a simple mistake about how many moons Jupiter had (not that I should throw a stone in that glass house – the last time I studied this many years ago I recall Jupiter had only about 12 moons). That had to be painful for Alex to see – at least she didn't see him cowering on the couch.

And Bill was every bit the less than smart person that we expected (starting with coming inside when Alex told him to wait in the car), and Alex finally did snap at him.

Phil and Claire's bizarre need to prove their smarts didn't help either.

3) Even the one scene with Haley and Alex alone didn't work that well. That was totally supposed to be set up for an emotional moment between them that never really happened. And while Haley wasn't wrong about how Alex was treating Bill (or people less smart than her in general), I really can't blame Alex for feeling that way – as much as I would have hated it if Alex's apology to Bill had been to late, I still really do not feel this relationship is going to go very far, and I'm not that unhappy about it.

But it does make me wonder again if Alex will ever find the right guy. If she can't keep the not so smart but good looking ones (Bill), the average ones (Jeremy, Michael, Alec), the nerdy but not quite smart ones (Reuben⁴, Ben) or the smart ones (Sanjay, Jason), I'm not sure who would be left. That's another reason why I felt Haley wasn't wrong – at some point Alex needs to stop pushing away and finding fault with anyone who would want to be her boyfriend (I still stand by what I said about Bill, though).

In the end tonight was a serious disappointment, with almost nothing involving Alex being good. I may still cry later (right now I'm more stunned than anything) but not for the reasons I thought I would.

Either that or chalk it up to even the best people can have bad days.  And, in so many ways, this may have been Alex's worst.

Alex's Line Of The Night: ”It was hard for me when Haley started dating Arvin. My professor and science hero, and, OK, fine – crush. I was so upset I went home and I may have overindulged, on bagel bites.”

So, I guess that's one way to react to getting your hopes dashed.  I'd still bet there was some ugly crying we didn't see before the fire.
 
And what do I have to look forward to now? Three days of pre-Easter retail hell. Ugh. (And, yes, that is part of why I'm not in a good mood right now.)
________________________________________________________
¹ I never saw the sequel, but since the two weren't together in that movie I guess that point was proved.

² I was originally going to say fire alarm chirps but then I remembered Alex wasn't around for that episode. And now that I think about it it was a smoke detector not a fire alarm that flummoxed Phil.

³ Of course, I went there.

⁴ OK, Reuben is about as far from Mr. Right as they go, but he lasted about as long as anybody in Alex's life.