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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I thought the Patrizio thing was kind of a weird sidebar, and that generally that couple had too many zigs and zags in this season.  (I love them both, they're probably my favorite couple, but it was a lot of back and forth across several dimensions.)[/quote]

Omg I love the Patrizia thing.  In part because everyone kept talking about her like she was a crazy housekeeper or something and then we find out she’s a dog.  And it was so emblematic of the one character always doing these impetuous things and letting his Italian husband contort himself to live with the results.  That’s why it was an important part of their character arc (also relevant to their whole convo about whether they can/should have a baby….we all know who would be getting up for night feedings with that baby.).  I loved the passive aggressive convo where they both knew the dog has been given away but neither will say it.  I also liked the gentle ribbing of the upstate middle aged lesbian stereotype.  I want to be an upstate middle aged lesbian with a yard full of dogs!

The one liners were also really good — “there’s a fine line between quaint and meth”.  [/quote]

There was some subtext to the relationship between Claude and Danny though, revealed in the Covid flashback. In the present storyline, we see Claude express an interest in having a kid, and then actually accuse Danny of preventing them from having one. But in the flashback, we see Danny suggesting becoming parents to Claude during the Thanksgiving weekend, and Claude reacts with actual disgust to the suggestion. Of course, this is in the context of Danny adopting Patricia and refusing to see how badly it was going, so you can understand why Claude is a hard no on a baby in that context -- he can see exactly how it will go.

I think the subtext is that Claude actually would have liked to have a kid but he recognizes that Danny probably isn't the right partner for raising kids with. They love each other and have a great life, but having a kid is going to create a very specific dynamic that is going to be hard on both of them because it will trigger both of their worst qualities and some of the cracks in their relationship. Later Claude expresses regret about not having a kid and blames Danny for getting in the way, and you assume it's because Danny said no to a kid. But he didn't -- he actually suggested a baby. It's that Danny's personality and tendencies aren't right for parenthood, even though Claude's are. But Claude also has a toxic trait -- he's a people pleasing nurturer who allows resentment over that role to build up, even when no one has explicitly asked him to fix it (takes one to know one, Claude).

And that's why they flip flop on who wants a kid -- on some level, they both know it's not a good idea, so even when one of them starts to warm to it, the other slams on the breaks. I thought it was actually a very realistic portrayal of how the best couples often understand their own limitations even when they don't say them out loud. That's why they also kind of agree silently never to actually acknowledge what happened with Patricia -- it would expose some things about each of them they don't really want to acknowledge, so it's easier to just live in the fiction that Patricia ran away.[/quote]

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