Writer: Michael Reisz
Director: Joanna Kerns
Originally Aired: 10/07/2008
Grade: A
This episode was a little heavy on the Megan/Lily drama but still quite enjoyable. Kristina Apgar's acting style doesn't mesh perfectly with Joanna Garcia's, but I do think she's improved greatly. I really felt for Lily in this episode, and I did think Megan was pretty harsh to her. With good reason, but still, her behavior didn't look understandable to anyone but the viewing audience, Lily, and Rose. I do like that Megan has faults, as long as it doesn't end up going the way of Veronica Mar's Season 3.
I also thought it was nice touch that though Charlie was humiliated by Will in front of Marco and whoever else was watching, he was ultimately right about Megan and Lily. There was a theme is this episode of both Megan and Charlie making asses out of themselves publicly, but ending up being right in the end, even though few people actually know it.
Still, Charlie was definitely acting passive-aggressive with Will in this episode. It could be argued that Will was a bit harsh with him, but I'm not a big fan of passive-aggressive behavior myself, so I completely understand why Will didn't let Charlie get away with his poorly concealed "making barbed comments and trying to make them seem benign" act.
Will's defense of Lily to Megan toward the end of the episode is a little harder to call, but honestly, after seeing Megan be so quick to accuse her sister and then fly off the handle, I don't blame Will for defending Lily. Will was technically on the "wrong side" because Lily did indeed steal the bracelet, but whatever I think of the skeeziness of dating the sister of someone you're interested in, I like that Will can stand up to Megan. And despite being ultimately right, Megan didn't handle the situation well. And neither did Charlie, for that matter. And they both know it.
As for Charlie’s epiphany, something about the way the scenes were written made his thought process confusing for me, but I think I finally figured it out. He offered to help Megan with the twins' party because he's in love with her (with a likely secondary motivation of wanting to scope out Will), but she clearly thought he offered to help because he's her friend. That was obvious. What took me a while to get is that he's been living with the delusion that some day, she's going to look at all the really nice things he's done for her and realize why he's doing them, without him ever having to say so. And he finally realized how delusional that is. He even sort of said all of that to Marco, but somehow it still wasn't quite clear to me. I guess because they phrased it more as "I'm a moron and Megan's never going to see me as more than a friend" than "I’m a moron because Megan's never going to realize that I do all this nice stuff for her because I have feelings for her."
Regarding Charlie’s likely change in attitude in the next few episodes, I think it's fine for him to distance himself, and maybe be slightly snippy, but it has to be completely clear that he is angry at himself and not at Megan. If it's played as him being angry at Megan, then it's just playing too close to the nasty "nice guy" stereotype, i.e. the nice guy who's not really a nice guy because he gets pissed off that the object of his affection doesn't read his mind and reward his lusty feelings with hugs and kisses and sex. I do not even remotely think that this is what Charlie is--he's too good a friend to her, despite having a few jealousy-induced hiccups--but a writing misstep could make it appear so.
Finally, Charlie needs to be fleshed out a bit more. We know that he's a waiter, that he loves Megan, that they've been friends for a very long time, that he likes to surf, that he's cute, and that he's apparently not gay. That's definitely not much to go on.
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