`Blue - Season 3, Episode 4

(click here to watch the episode)

Jessica confronts Olsen about his past relationship with Blue. Francesca disappoints Josh who turns to Blue for support. Blue and Arthur discuss their future as things become more personal. Olsen shares some shocking information.

"She accused me of looking the other way, while you were having sex with her, back then, when you and I were lovers, Wayne.  Tell me it isn't true."  "Of course not."

Francesca is a restrained  bundle of curiosity, as she talks with May, a very pregnant girl at school.  It takes May a while to figure out why Francesca is so inquisitive, but as she does, it's a virtually nonverbal realization.    

The family pow-wow between Josh and Francesca sounds more like a therapy session and consequently a contrivance.  It may be a directing issue, more than a writing one, but it's a weak scene.

"I think they wanted our opinion, and they heard us.  But it's in their court.  You have to be prepared for that."  "That's bullshit!"  

It must be a terrible situation to be in, having to decide what to do with a baby.  Moreover, 50-50 responsibility clearly doesn't equate into 50-50 control, as Blue schools Josh on this reality.  But it's crucial to struggle through all of this, and the filmmaking is at its superb self again.

"Do you enjoy it?"  "Not the sex, no, that's just like coming, that's gymnastics.  I don't even really consider it sex.  The game-playing, the role-playing, the dressing up and undressing, the theater of it all, not just for the clients but for me, too.  That's easy.  That is so fucked up!"

"I was crying, because we repeat, Josh.  There's this thing in families, we have these patterns that travel down like shit.  Your grandmother got pregnant when she was 19 and didn't want to, and I got pregnant when I was 16, and... now you.  And I'm not saying that you're doomed.  You're smarter than we are, and you're decent, and straight as an arrow, and I admire you.  But shit happens.  It's partially my fault, because I probably told you about a thousand times to always wear a condom, until it was just background noise.  Shit happens anyway, because God has a sense of humor.  Or at least I tell myself that, so I won't go crazy."

"You've got to come from something really personal, and it's got to come from a place that, you know, that kind of hurts.  And if you don't come from that place, then it's shit."

Rodrigo García* has Alexz Johnson as Satya singing on stage, then wends our gaze from her lover Lara feeling her song, to Josh a bit lost at school, then Blue focused at work, to Arthur and his children with a police officer.  It's not exactly innovative filmmaking, but it's very tender and fitting, and it all speaks to us.

That "shocking information" Olsen shares with Blue, in the very last scene, is our segue to Season 4.

*By the way, as I edit this article, it is August 24th, and I just found out from Wikipedia that today is also García's 55th birthday.  I turned 55 on July 31st, so he's just 24 days younger than I.  What's more, I found out recently that he is the son of Gabriel García Márquez, the writer who wrote one of my enduring favorite novels Love in the Time of Cholera.  I think I read just a handful of his short stories, no other novel, but I was just enthralled with him.  Márquez died just this year, on April 17th in fact, and at the same age that my mother died:  87.  Now I am enthralled with his son even more.