“'Cause You Had A Bad Day” (“Putting Down Roots” Recap)

It wasn't quite as much so as I hoped (a lengthy hug would have been nice), but I am glad that overall Alex was supportive of Haley tonight (especially given her mood towards her other sibling, which I'll get to in a moment).

Alex may or may have thought about saying something snarky, or at least an “I knew this would happen someday” (she actually was at a loss for words, so caught off guard by the revelation), but when she saw that Haley was upset, she did say the right things to try and make Haley feel better.   Hopefully she'll give Haley even more support next week when presumably everyone else finds out (I do expect some less than kind things to be said by at least one person).

But outside of that, Alex really did have a bad day, reliving a bad day out of her past.

And having a brother undermining you doesn't help.  Not that I lack for examples from the past nine-plus years, but from now on, whenever someone online says Alex is mean to her family, I'm citing what Luke did to those two puzzles as proof that they deserve it.

(Although I do have to admit I have peeled off the stickers of a Rubik's Cube myself.  But, in my defense, it was to “solve” the puzzle, not to prevent someone else from doing so.)

Maybe if I wasn't a fan of Alex, I could see the humor in her plight.  But, as usual, I'm more sad and angry that she had a meltdown, and that Luke caused it.  If Alex had killed Luke tonight, I'd want to be on the jury at her trial – there's no way I'd let her get convicted.

In spite of some of the (expectedly) weird gifts that Dede gave to the adults in her family (OK, the car not so much), I thought the toy box and old toys made perfect sense as a gift for the kids.  Too bad she had no idea of Alex's frustration with that puzzle (or why it happened).

There was one weird dichotomy in two things Alex said: She said that she was top of her class (at CalTech), and yet, one of her professors (I'm assuming that's who Dr. Johnson is) says she didn't have what it takes to live on Mars.  I'm guessing (s)he thinks that Alex is too emotional to handle whatever pressure there is in living in a strange environment?  Since I'm not a professor I can't say (s)he is wrong, but I'd think if Alex is top of her class (or even close) she'd still be more of an asset than a liability.

And does Alex saying she is top of her class set us up for a speech at her commencement?

Finally, it might not be a good idea for Alex to have her phone out near Gloria – if she says the wrong thing she might lose another phone to a vandalizer.

Alex's Line Of The Night: ”Or, how you'd hold the book while I read myself a bedtime story?  And you're still doing it.  You just swooped in and handled our fight like a pro.  And you're understanding, and loving, and a total badass.”  I didn't particularly like the left turn that scene took after that line (when Luke admitted messing around with Alex's Rubik Cube, leaving Alex ready to kill him again), but those were sweet words she said to Haley¹, and, again, I'm glad she said them.

One more episode to go for 2018 – hopefully next week's Christmas episode will be as good as this one.
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¹ That's the first and almost certainly last time I'll consider the word “badass” to be sweet...