“You’ve been smooching! Under my tutelage! I love it!”
The penultimate episode, and this one is again framed by a theme introduced by a Sam monologue, in this case that rituals are important, being an ongoing reassurance that everything is ok. And Casey’s birthday (she’s 16) is a day full of rituals for Sam- but are those rituals about her, or about himself? That’s a lesson Sam has to learn, gradually, with a lot of time-consuming and amusing rituals punctuating an episode dealing with a fair bit of serious stuff.
There’s a parallel with Elsa too; Casey wants to keep her birthday low key with just a few people, not least so that she can have her “second first time” with the rather lovely Evan. But Elsa arranges a large party, ostensibly for Casey but in reality because of her own need to be seen to be doing something to reconnect with her. These parallels are rather clever.
On top of this Zahid inadvertently blurts out to Paige that Sam has been smooching with someone else, and the party comes to an unhappy end when Casey’s “friends” from her new school, including Izzy, turn out to have been invited by Elsa in a clumsy attempt to get them to make up.
Still, all’s well that ends well, sort of. Izzy makes up with Casey, having never cared about her douchebag boyfriend anyway and being terrified of losing Casey- and they kiss. Most touchingly, though, Sam learned that day that he got into his chosen uni- but keeps quiet about it as the day is all about Casey. It’s a touching, funny, brilliantly structured episode. Aren’t they all, though?
Roll on season finale...
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