Fan Forum - View Single Post - The Roomies #54: Because her life is at a crossroads so it can *intersect* with his

**DaveAbbyLuver** · 04-19-2008, 12:07 PM

Great songs, guys. I'll add them to the soundtrack. And I still need to watch the episode, but I'd just like to say, re: the dream and xray's explanation for it, the writers are that smart. Or have been in the past. S11 and S12 were almost entirely all subtext, as was a lot of what went on in S13, looking back on it. They may be moving back toward that manner of storytelling, which was all about the subtlety.

As far as Neela and the dating thing, again, I haven't seen it yet, but from what people are saying so far, it sounds like typical Neela. She is definitely the type to throw herself into work to avoid dealing with things she doesn't want to: grief, guilt, loneliness, etc. It sounds like she's getting to the same point she was at in "Here and There" (before Gallant returned in the following episode) where she realized all she had was work, and Pratt told her to get laid. It's worse for her now because she's older, and also because she's already been widowed and had the equivalent of a divorce when she moved out of Ray's apartment, and a separation when he went back to Baton Rouge. She was physically, legally married to Michael, but emotionally, she married to Ray, and both 'marriages' ended within a short period of time. The poor girl's been through hell the last couple of seasons. It makes perfect sense and it's perfectly in character for her to use work to avoid dealing with it.

And given her reaction to Abby's comment about Ray (looked like her eyes welled up and she managed to control herself until after she kicked Abby out. After that, I bet she was a bawling mess), and the interaction between her and Ray in THO, I don't question her feelings for him, only the way the writers have chosen to write the storyline with one of the actors off screen, and the way they have chosen to focus the show. We have to remember that we haven't seen nearly as much of Neela this season. (And by 'nearly as much, I mean 'hardly seen her at all') We know Ray sent her a letter, and my personal opinion is that she had to have contacted him first, based on the way they parted in THO. I think we're meant to assume/believe that there has been interaction and communication between them off screen, hence why they threw the mention of the letter in there. They did the same thing with her and Gallant during S11, if you remember. In "Here and There", they wrote it that She and Gallant had been writing letters ever since he left during S10, but there were no mentions of any letters on the actual show until that episode. They may be doing the same thing here.

And finally, we have to remember that Neela doesn't have any close friends except Abby and Pratt. She's not going to talk to Pratt about Ray because Pratt was her late husband's best friend, and it'd be weird. And Abby...well, Abby has been wrapped up in Abbyland for most of the season. Add to that that the only time she actually mentioned Ray to Neela was to sucker punch her so she could divert attention from being a drunk, and...yeah. I wouldn't wanna talk to her either. She doesn't have anyone she'd talk to about it, and letters and phone calls would require us having seen more of Neela, which appears to have come under the heading of 'not Abby or Luka or Gates, or tied to any of their storylines, so we don't need to write about her.'

~Ash