I laughed to myself when last month I might have been overcome by the aching, so I guess it’s getting better.
There’s a trope in action movies and TV shows where there’s an undercurrent of personal tension — a couple is not getting along, or perhaps they’re trying to deny the fact that they’re clearly attracted to each other — and as the bad guys are closing in, they start talking about it instead of running away or tackling the bad guys.
Red would roll her eyes and moan, “Oh, come on,” and we would laugh and start imagining that as the couple is talking through their emotions, the bad guys catch up and kill them, end of movie.
Well, that’s exactly what happened not once, but twice, in the Season 2 finale of Joe Pickett, a mostly fine adaptation of the C.J. Box novels on Paramount+.
Joe and his wife are on the run with a wounded fugitive, and the posse is in the woods, but they somehow have time to sit by the river and talk out their issues.
Meanwhile, back home, Grandma and the kids see three armed men in ski masks pull up to the front of the house, so they flee out the back door through the woods, over the river, and through some more woods to meet up with Grandma’s beau, whom she called for help, so they can drive away in his pickup truck. But before the grownups get in the truck to safety, they have an interminable conversation about their future together. We never really did see what became of the three armed men pursuing them.
I imagined Red rolling her eyes and moaning, “Oh, come on,” and I laughed. Oh sure, I’m overcome by the aching as I tell you the story, but in the moment I laughed and reveled in the memory of how she would have reacted.
So progress has been made in the effort to adjust to my new normal. We’re getting there.
