tug_san

There are some great jokes sprinkled here and there and very rarely good episodes (like three?), but ultimately it's riddled with clichés and reminds you of every other sitcom of the 2010s with the quirky schtick. Half of the jokes are also aged like milk. The "toxicity is her love language" plots are interesting at first, the pilot especially looked very promising but it gets old very fast. Then when it's attempted again and again in every episode with little to no variation in between episodes, it almost becomes a parody or a critique of sitcoms it tries to emulate. Maybe the writers only had one idea for one episode and then proceeded to copy and paste that into the rest or maybe they were overworked and underpaid and got their revenge on cable TV in their own way by writing these. Still, there are some (although like I said very few) episodes that made me laugh out loud so much so that I almost felt bad about the ruined potential. Chloe's dresses were phenomenal every episode by the way. I wish we could see her M rated character spark too in the age of streaming instead of forcefully being watered down to a safe PG.

From a teenager perceiving willingness to help as a sign of lack of trust and underestimation to the reply from the child to the parent's advice "Maybe you should show him that you need him to". This show brims with nuance and wisdom. And not a make-believe one just for the sake of the show, real wisdom coming from a very real place from all of our lives. I do not know who wrote that tea scene but I want to congratulate not just that one but the whole show for maintaining that compassionate approach to human nature and relationships that even 10 years later, rewatching the show, still puts some things into perspective for me. And no doubt along with many others in the audience. In this episode, you clearly see what Zuko is going through, maybe much more clearly than it can be in real life. What his angst costs him when he is ridden with guilt and regret as he pushes away the only people who can help. Maybe a fate he would share with Toph if she never came across Iroh and left the group. A lack of support and assurance at the right time might take a whole lifetime to fix. So it's all the more exhilarating to watch a perfectly drawn character like Iroh say all the right things to abridge the passage.