I. Jason Says Good-Bye (1/17)
Carly: "In a hurry?"
Jason: "I have someplace to be."
Carly: "It's kind of important."
Jason: "Ok."
Carly: "I know you don't want an explanation. I know. To you, when a thing is done, it can't be changed."
Jason: "Carly--"
Carly: "No, look, I just--you know the night that I came to you in the rain and didn't have anywhere else to go? There was no reason for you to help me, but you did? Ever since then, no matter how crazy I got, no matter how scared I got, I--I just never felt like I could fall, you know, because I knew that you would--you would always be there to catch me. Will you? I mean, did I ruin that when I ruined everything else?"
Jason: "What are you asking me? To help you when you need it? You know I will. You know I can't see you in trouble and not stop it."
Carly: "Thank you."
Jason: "But I won't be your excuse anymore for doing stupid stuff that hurts everyone, especially Michael. Now, Carly, I--you have to understand that I can't love you the way you want me to."
Carly: "You're saying that because I hurt you. It's not--"
Jason: "No, no, seeing you and Sonny together proved what I already knew. If I let you, you would wreck me."
Carly: "No."
Jason: "No, look, you wouldn't mean to, but you would do it. I mean, the next time you get scared or you get angry, what, how am I supposed to help you? How can I keep catching you if there's nothing left of me? You and I are friends. We're best friends in the world. And I hope that you're happy someday and I hope to god you find someone who can love you the way you need. But it wasn't me. Never was."
Carly: "You know, when my baby needed a father, you gave him one. When I got locked in a mental institution, you got me out. When I hit rock bottom, you saved me. That's how I need you to love me. That's it."
Jason: "Listen to me, ok? You are Michael's mother. He needs you to do what's best for him. Ok, and you just got to start trusting yourself to do things right without counting on me to tell you--"
Carly: "I'll always count on you."
Jason: "Just tell Michael that--just, uh, kiss him for me, ok?"
Carly: "Soon as I get home."
Carly: "Pregnant. God. Ok, it's got to be--it's got to be wrong. Oh, god. What am I going to do? Jason, what am I going to do?"
For some reason I notice that both Jason and Carly were wearing blue shirts under their jackets during the "good-bye" scene. Then Liz has on a blue scarf as well, under the jacket he gave her that looks so much like his. Jason and Carly do share a hug, and he walks away first. Jason kisses Elizabeth's forehead and she leaves first when Jason says good-bye to her. I wonder if Jason knows that if he says good-bye, Carly will have a fit. And I wonder if that's what he wanted to avoid.
We had a music montage at the end of this episode with Jason driving away and Carly in her room. I would have liked some old Jason and Carly scenes included, instead of Elizabeth, but that was the least of our complaints:
Amy: "So, didn't I read, in several places, that Jason would give Carly a little kiss before he left, but she wouldn't know that he was saying goodbye? I only saw a hug, and the kiss I saw was a rather lingering one on Liz's forehead. I heartily resented that she was featured in the musical montage at the end of the episode--as if this were a triangle, or as if she, having been Jason's leech for a few weeks, should weigh as heavily in his departure."
"Her scenes, by the way, with his 'I can't see you,' 'Ok, I can see you,' 'But now I'm leaving' sequence have been sheer agony. She's not even pitiful; she's just really, really annoying. Yuck."
Terry: "Yep, something got altered along the way, it seems. We also got spoilers for last week saying he came to some realization about his relationship with Carly, but we didn't get that explicitly in the week we were supposed to get it, either. Okay, we got some sort of slop as he left in which he told Sonny that he and Carly should just be friends, in the Monday episode that made me want to spit (more below) but that wasn't the sort of thing the spoilers seemed to mean and it didn't happen last week. I think they decided, for whatever reason, not to leave the door open too much for Jason/Carly, so rather than having him say he loves her but can't live with her and rather than have him kiss her just one long lingering payoff kiss before he goes, we got that cop-out yesterday."
"As for the montage, yep, I was spewing. It was awful. Liz got the goodbye after Carly, and got to know what he was doing, and got included in the montage. What a load of crap. What is this? I was left with the feeling that I should be glad he was going, or we'd have been stuck with more of this silly Jason/Liz junk."
"And what was with that stuff with Sonny, too? Okay, the Jason/Sonny farewell stuff itself was fine--the guys getting all choked up, Maurice getting to do that read-on-two-levels talk about 'you need to see what's out there or you'll always wonder, maybe you'll find out this is where you belong or maybe you'll shine somewhere else,' lots of attention to history. In fact, most of the goodbyes over the last few days have been good on history, and I've appreciated that (the Monica talk about Dorman in the hotel, the talk with Lila, Emily's realistic tears). But at the center of the story, there was a big gaping hole where the historical, mushy, bittersweet Jason/Carly dynamic should be."
Amy: "I was weeping at Sonny and Jason. I'll admit it."
Terry: "Even in that scene at Liz's loft that bugged Joan and I so, we at least got the words out of Jason that should have been said not only then but ever after--'I love you, too, but it doesn't matter now.' Okay, I hated that after having to wait that long to hear him realize he loved her that it was said so dismissively. But that could have worked, if he'd have kept that attitude throughout the last few weeks--admitting to himself and to Carly that he does love her as she loves him, but arguing that it would never work, that they are not good together, that he couldn't trust her, etc. etc. That's sort of where they have been for a long while, but without him saying aloud that he loved her too."
"But yesterday, while talking with Carly and with Sonny, Jason said he didn't love Carly romantically, that she and he should only be friends but she wanted more and he didn't. That pissed me off royally. If he'd said that to her but admitted to Sonny that there was more than that on his side but he couldn't let on to Carly because of her tenaciousness, I'd have made my grumpy peace with it. It would have worked for the future, too, as it would add a layer to Sonny's relationship with Carly if, while she's hurting because Jason had left, Sonny was the only one who knew that she was right about Jason's feelings and that Jason did love her, too."
"That crap about hoping Carly found someone who loved her really made me crazy. As I say, if he'd said that to her face but undercut it with Sonny, so that we saw that was just a strategy to let her go for her own sake, that's okay. As it stands, it stinks. And when I thought that was the worst, he also told Sonny that Carly was using Michael, which also stinks and made me madder than ever."
"Okay, so I hated Jason's departure, because they changed the rules mid-game in a way that didn't work for me and made me feel cheated and because they saddled the character of Jason with this whole RobinII/Liz relationship, which seemed to make Steve happy but did nothing for me, or for the long-term story in my opinion. Hated it."
"Terry, who really, really wanted that kiss"
Arda: "I agree, Terry. All of the goodbyes were fine, but the big drama would have been in Jason saying goodbye to Carly. Benard was fantastic--I thought Burton wasn't as good as he's capable of being--but the stuff coming out of their mouths had no emotional truth. I can't imagine why the powers that be chose this path."
Amy: "I wondered if Steve was showing less emotion because, if he showed any, he wouldn't have made it through the scene--especially with Maurice? But I thought the goodbyes were very nice. I thought the Sonny/Jason stuff was the best, and the stuff with Monica. And I wondered if maybe Jason was putting Carly/his departure in terms Sonny would understand, though I do think that they just backed off (for whatever reason) and denied that Jason loves Carly. I'd like to say that Jason's telling himself he can't love Carly, because he just doesn't want to get hurt any more, but I'd like him to acknowledge that as a choice, as you say. And most of all, whether he wants to tell Carly he's leaving or not, he should tell her that he forgives her. Like Luke, Carly carries around the 'I'm unforgivable' belief all the time, and to be assured that one of her acts is forgiven--despite the consequences--would have been nice."
Joan: "I'm reading all these messages fast, and nodding my damn head off instead of forcing you to endure umpteen 'ditto's, but I just had to step in here and say a big Amen to the wish that Jason had forgiven Carly (even though by this time, I think it should be the other way around). I especially wanted to see this because of the very quiet Carly/Jason scene that played right after The Act, when Carly predicted that Jason would forgive them (Sonny too), because 'that's what you do.'"
Amy: "And he could have forgiven her and still left. Could have forgiven her but chosen not to stay."
Arda: "Terry's right. None of what Jason said about Carly made any sense. What's been annoying me is if Jason doesn't have romantic feelings toward Carly then why is it necessary for him to forgive Sonny? Why did he freeze Carly out if he had no feelings for her? Why is Sonny referring to Carly as 'your woman'?"
Amy: "Bingo. I think Sonny has it right while Jason is in denial, and that the fact Jason has something to forgive proves it. I like to fantasize that Jason was actually scared at the thought of loving Carly when she hurt him, and he took the easy way out, using Michael, just a little bit, as the excuse."
Arda: "What was the point of the Jason/Carly arc if it was going to end with a whimper? I keep hoping Guza has some 'huge' thing in mind, but I'm getting frustrated with these anti-climactic endings. It's not like Guza had no notice that Burton was leaving. Instead of wasting time 'developing' the relationship between Liz and Jason, they could have spent the time on Carly and Jason and given us some real drama."
Amy: "I try not to listen to all of the online rumors, but the writing here has convinced me that much of this one was somebody else's doing, and that this wasn't where Guza was headed. I don't think Guza would have done this on his own. I think I read that they had already written or maybe even filmed the beginning of the Liz stuff when Burton made his announcement--so I think it was kind of quick. And I think that, had Burton stuck around, we would have had a pay-off--this would have been one more delay in the Carly/Jason pairing. But even given what little notice they had, I don't think that it was the wisest choice to put Liz in the mix, at least in the way they did it. I would have liked it better if Jason hadn't appeared to be falling for her too, part of the time--if they had used it primarily for a way to set Nikolas and Liz against each other, rather than making it more about Jason's feelings turning away from Carly, etc. (which is what I saw-'Gee, Liz's nice. I guess I don't love Carly like I was starting to after all.'). And what was with that, 'I can't see you,' 'Ok, I can see you,' 'But now I'm leaving'? It was like in 3 consecutive episodes, and was stupid."
Arda: "I need my soap to give me drama and angst and emotional turmoil. I want the fiction organized so it delivers the most punch. Real life is haphazard and disorganized but fiction shouldn't be."
Amy: "I'm tired of reading this accusation, but I still get the sense that there are too many cooks in the kitchen. While things are moving a bit, and while we have a tad more integration, sometimes things just stall out for like a week, and then move again."