Jerry D

I completely agree. Amy's heart was in the right place, but Harold was giving Hannah much better advice than she was.

jediwands

Amy was passively annoyed but not throwing a fit. It might be my Amy love but I cannot watch this episode and blame Amy for much of anything given what she finds out in this one. She didn't get furious with Harold, she was just irritated overall. She didn't force Hannah to take the test either even if she has been pushy about it in the past. If she would have gotten super mad I would have taken issue with it. But given what she endures in this one... Harold dropping the bomb on her that an adult woman illegally got impregnated by the person she is in love with and in her mind she has to keep it from him until he gets through an audition... it sucks. All of it sucks. Taking in the totality I cannot judge Amy in this one.

jediwands

It was completely contrived. It was absolutely the writers way of getting Harold to tell Amy in order to put her in a difficult position and essentially set up Ephram raging and breaking up with her. It infuriates me while thinking about this. Yes, it was secondarily to show she had forgiven Ephram for the band lie. I just found it so contrived and unrealistic. There isn't a teenage girl who would like and be okay with Madison in this scenario, forgiveness or not. I could see if we're talking another 1-2 years down the road. But the time period is not that far away from the band lie, and Ephram and Madison were just dating in S2.

I despise that Amy had to take the fall here. Harold put her in a miserable position. Just thinking about Rina's words annoy me. She wanted to torture Amy and admitted as much in her dumb way. She was ready to go there in S5. Unacceptable. I bet she would have been jumping for joy with a grin on her face had the Ferris Wheel scene with Amy standing there alone taken place.

Jerry D

I wonder why Rina seemed to delight in seeing Amy suffer? Maybe Amy was the type of girl that Rina was jealous of (she admitted that she was like Hannah in High School) so this was her way of getting back at that type of girl. It's too bad that Berlanti left so much power in her hands.

Similarly, on The Vampire Diaries, Julie Plec lived out her bad-boy fantasies by breaking up Kevin Williamson's "soulmate" couple, Stefan and Elena, and putting Damon and Elena together once he walked away from that show, just like Paul Stupin did with putting Pacey and Joey together when he walked away from Dawson's Creek.

Jerry D

I just took a mandatory course on sexual harassment in the workplace, (the company requires all of us to take courses like this on line once a year) and one thing that struck me was this exchange between Bright and Jillian:

So if Jillian was sending Bright sexually explicit emails too, then I don’t think that her case truly represented sexual harassment or sexual misconduct on Bright’s part, and it just seemed like Jillian was fine with those emails until Bright went out with her, had sex with her, and then didn’t call her again, so she went to HR accusing him of sexual misconduct, so although Bright was wrong to do what he did, he didn’t deserve to be fired. Another point is that Human Resources didn’t fire Bright, they were just going to transfer him to another department, which leads me to believe that they realized that Jillian played a part in everything. Rose was the one who fired Bright because she didn’t like how he was treating women in general and because of what he said to her about Jillian’s “Bitch Mood,” but in all honesty I feel that Bright really got the short end of the stick here. Granted, I didn’t like Bright’s cavalier attitude toward women and I think it’s wrong for any man to treat women like that, but there were two sides to this story, and Bright, due in large part to his arrogance in that meeting, didn’t get to present his side of the story.

The course I just took defined sexual harassment as unwanted sexual advances toward someone else, with the key word being unwanted. It seemed to me that Jillian was fine with Bright’s behavior until he had sex with her and he didn’t call her again. Granted Bright was wrong to treat her and other women like, as Rose said, interchangeable objects, but I honestly don’t think that what he did constituted sexual misconduct. One thing I did learn in this course is that you have to be really careful in the workplace, and sometimes even saying something like “you look nice” to someone can get you in trouble if they take it the wrong way, so I’m glad that I’m pretty introverted and I hardly talk to anyone at work!

everwoodfan52

I agree with all of this. Sexual harassment was not a factor here. THese were two consenting adults who dated and had sex. Jillian was a woman scorned because Bright lost interest. He should not have lost his job.

Jerry D

I completely agree, and technically, he wasn't going to lose his job but Rose fired him because she was furious at him because of his cavalier attitude toward women, but I think that she was wrong in this case.

jediwands

Exactly what I was thinking. Matter of fact, there are some past posters on this very board, three of them I can think of, who pretty much insinuated they could relate more to Hannah and were much tougher on Amy as a result. They loved Rina too. There’s a pattern. There’s also a reason I disliked all three (as people in general, my intuitive feelings existed back then too) and my guess is you know at least one I’m referring to.

So yes, if Rina admitted she was Hannah in high school it’s likely she never had an Amy friendship though and disliked Amy types and she took it out on Everwood Amy.

Julie Plec sounds like an idiot.

jediwands

Exactly. I thought it was clear the issue was Bright just wanted to have fun, have sex, she wanted a relationship and he didn’t. He dropped her. That’s not sexual harassment… that is Bright being horrible, make no mistake, but not what she was accusing him of.

That said, I was still glad he lost his job to be honest. There was a pattern with him dating coworkers and being reckless. Fooling around with a girl in the closet and he was a boss on top of it all. Not the ultimate boss but he was still in charge and fooling around with a girl under him in a closet. Then his parents, well really his mother, gets him another job not knowing what he did at his previous job because he lied. She gets him a job and once again really doesn’t care he was getting involved with another coworker knowing he got fired at his previous job for being careless. He persists with another coworker. While he didn’t sexually harass her, he obviously wanted to get her into bed and just have fun without any actual committed relationship. Fine, but his boss even pointed out he was talking to her during work hours when he should’ve been working. Same goes for her as well. But like we don’t care about Amanda, we only care about Andy and in this case we only care about Bright. With Bright, there was a pattern and Rose needed to say what she said to him. He embarrassed his parents all because he didn’t just focus on his job which is what most people do. Which is why I was shocked he told Ephram he loved his job. If he really loved it, he would have focused primarily on his job only.

Jerry D

Oh yes I do!

Which is really unfair.

She really is an idiot.

With both The Vampire Diaries and Dawson's Creek though I blame Kevin Williamson for walking away from those shows and leaving them in the hands of incompetent idiots who took the show and the characters in an entirely different direction.

jediwands

Berlanti slightly stepped away in S3 and give Rina the temporary keys. This wasn’t a carbon copy of Williamson giving Stupin the keys because the keys Berlanti gave Rina were not permanent, more like a rental. Williamson gave Stupin a permanent set of keys which Rina witnessed too. There is a pattern. You don’t leave your show for very long or at all if you can help it. You risk turning it over to a control freak who takes the show in a completely different direction, changes characters, pairings, even a show’s premise.

The only good news with Everwood is Berlanti was well aware of S3 storylines. But I will forever believe the band lie was all Rina, maybe having Harold tell Amy and the way Ephram turns on her was all Rina too.

Has she ever done anything meaningful?

Williamson is a true idiot. I will never understand what he was thinking.