BlondieLeigh

We got so little Peyton/Karen. Really wish Karen had been more present post time jump.

Lethal Weapon is pretty good. I'm watching at UK pace, though, so haven't seen her yet.

Slayerette89

Shame we didn't see more of them.

Love this scene



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Wish we so more of Peyton/Whitey too. In scenes/sls not involving Jake and Jenny. I don't enjoy anything if JJ are involved.

msstock87

That was a great scene.

Olderroswellfan

Great actress and great show!

BlondieLeigh

Loved that scene

Slayerette89

1.05 generally has so many good Peyton scenes. The only thing I didn't like was that nobody told her not to put other ppl in danger by running red lights. Other than that, I much approved of all the angst.

Forwood4Bamon

Yes. I saw Peyton/Karen in season 2.

BlondieLeigh

That really should have happened

Slayerette89

Yeah, but oth just can't ever do things right.



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BlondieLeigh

There never was much. Annoying.

Tumblr Poll asking for people's top 10 favourite Peyton relationships - https://polldaddy.com/poll/9731324/

Slayerette89

Definitely annoying. I'm never getting over the "she didn't have a mother so she must crave nurturing children herself. at the age of 16 at that." part of Peyton's characterization. My teen self was viscerally repulsed watching that and so is my adult self over a decade later.

BlondieLeigh

I always saw Peyton as someone that would eventually want children, it was really stupid for them to try and force her into it at 16, though, because no 16 year old wants a child that young (well, I guess one or two do, but the vast majority don't and Peyton was realistically in that majority), especially a child that is not theirs, they have no obligation to etc. The whole thing was a bad joke, tbh.

Slayerette89

I'd prefer her not to in general, but I wouldn't have been as disgusted if they didn't shove a baby her way at such a young age. It was a bad joke indeed. Babies are demanding as hell and a moody 16 old wouldn't be so thrilled with sacrificing her time and energy on taking care of one. Though I'm sure Mark&co think it's girl's/women's natural instinct to do so.

There is generally something so fake and repulsive about how this show portrays family imo. Their copious images of smiley, bland idiots who look like poster children for Ideal Family make me sick. I don't even like that couch scene with Letyon + Sawyer because it's shot in that same cheesy, repulsive way this show always shot its "look! a family! with a baby!" scenes.

Same with how character's professional lives often strike me as a vapid Hollywood fantasy, so I can't enjoy 90% of those sls either. And it didn't even start in s5, but in s2 with Peyton's club running and Haley's pop staring, continuing into s3 and 4 with all of that + Brooke's sudden fashion designing. Never liked how they portrayed all the joking and cheerleading either./end incoherent ott rant

On a more positive note, loved this throwback


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BlondieLeigh

I could just always see it happening, not just because of this show being this show, but because of how she was in general. With a dead mother and an absent father, she wanted stability (her "people always leave" comment highlighted that for me, it was a defence mechanism to protect herself from the instability others created), and she knew she would have to make her own. It's actually one of the reasons that early season 6 bothers me. Lucas was the definition of unreliable following season 5, and with everything she had been through it's unlikely that the promise of forever, marriage or not, would have been enough. It shouldn't have been that easy.

However, a baby does not create any form of stability for a teenager, so imo it actually went against her character to try and force it on her so young, especially because it was someone else's baby that could be taken away from her at any time. No one in Peyton's position would want that. She had already lost so much already, and they're trying to tell me that she would voluntarily put herself in a position where she would lose more. As someone that sees a lot of herself in her, nope...

The career stuff is annoying. I would have loved the label stuff if it had been more of a struggle, but it just came so easily after she was supposedly struggling in LA that it was ridiculous.

I love that parallel, too

Slayerette89

Good points. A desire to create her own family at some point (though not her teens or early twenties) as a source of stability definitely makes sense. It’s just that her early s1 emotional detachment resonated more with me. Another way to create stability for yourself when your family members are dead (her mom) or mostly absent (her dad) is to try to root your stability in yourself and not other people. That’s why I loved her general reluctance to get close to others and her “I never let myself need anyone” comment in late s1 to Haley. But the show imo unnecessarily speed up her character development and the development of her relationships. I wish we saw more of her getting to know Haley and Lucas before opening up to them. I also wish they gave her more time to recover from her shallow, toxic relationship with Nathan and shallow, toxic friendship with Brooke. I wanted her to first spend some time away from both of them and then maybe develop a healthier friendship with them at some later point. (Not that Peyton's character and relationship development were the only ones that were rushed and unsatisfactory, but I don't care about other characters much.)

Jenny and Jake were imo completely unnecessary. When I first watched 3.21 I was so glad that the show finally acknowledged Peyton’s obsession with that family was unhealthy. But then they gave her and LP that annoying marriage narrative in s5 and I was back to being annoyed.