ShadowMagist

Agreed. It just felt too much of a retread of The Kissing Bridge, with Andy trying to save the town from sexual teenagers. Mimoun 1, Taylor 0. I did like however, the theme that you should come out into the open and disclose these types of situations, as difficult as they may be. Which seemed to be a season long thing, with Amy and her diner outburst, Linda and her HIV, Nina and the divorce.

And on the writer front, I'd like to point out that Vanessa Taylor was all over the Linda arc. She first introduces her here, is the first one to tackle the "outing" in The Burden of Truth, and then closes out the arc in Do or Die. Obviously the other writers tackled some of the other important stuff, but she in particular had the majors down.
I'm gonna have to disagree big time. Was there a missed opportunity to delve into the Abbott's past? Absolutely. But we could say that about all of the other characters who didn't have the last name of Brown. I think it was an important time to go back to, to see when the change happened, where Harold was left to take care of his family, thus fostering his intense family-comes-first demeanor. As for the actors, they didn't bother me at all, but I personally loved the younger Edna. I could actually see her growing into Debra Mooney, gravelly voice and all. The writing for her was perfect too; it brought to mind Deer God and The Price of Fame to be specific. I noticed that when she's put into foreign or emotional situations, she falls back on her military lingo, but after awhile, she softens it up, which is exactly what she did here.

Completely agree about numbers one and two. Number 3 always amuses me. "Did you know that Edna considers domesticity a sign of weakness?" "I consider not clocking you on your ass a sign of charity." Edna for the win! And yeah, I really liked Linda's explanation. Other shows should totally reference Everwood when it comes to family dynamics. It doesn't get much better than this!

"Milk. 2%" Who does that, really? Harold, you are in BAR for crying out loud. I do agree with the obligation thing, but let us not forget that he was also dating/engaged/married to Rose around the time when he would've been able to leave. Whether or not she'd leave with him is a big thing to consider as well. I just don't see him being the guy to give up the girl in pursuit of glory or an adventure. Sure he may make a snide comment here or there every once in awhile about Everwood being a miserable little town, but he, on some level had to have loved it somewhat even back then. I do believe I'm rambling here though, so I'm gonna stop. Lol.

I think we got some good insight into how Nina thinks of things in this episode and it stayed true to the end of the series. When something bad happens to her or her family life, she'd try and sweep it under the rug. I can see why some people think of her as a not-so-strong female character, but she has her moments, i.e, when pushed/annoyed. Can we consider this then poor character development? I don't think so. I mean, yeah, we can sit here and say she needs to change, the writer's need for her to change, but change is not that easy. And you need something at the core to define a character, this is unfortunately her trait, but it's not her only trait, and that kind of muli-layered attention is rare today.

Heh.

And finally, I still hate that they took out Get Together by The Youngbloods. The replacement song is a fine second choice, but that's all it'll ever be. It's just too...generic sounding. *annoyed*

Question! When we get to episodes that have deleted scenes, are we going to discuss those too?