Yeah and so far I am not liking what I am seeing

I know! It's been a rough season.

Only three episodes left, though. It will all be over in a little over two weeks.

We only have 73 posts this week.

If anyone can help us make 32 more posts, that would be awesome. I'll be back later this afternoon to post!

Take your time Amy

Does anyone have any predictions for next week's season finale?

On the Afterbuzz TV show, the co-hosts are predicting that Bay will decide to move to Tokyo with Travis.

I never considered that, because I never imagined that Lizzy Weiss would allow Bay to leave Daphne. But maybe Lizzy Weiss would split up the girls. What do others think?

As awful as Daphne has been to Bay, I would not mind to see Bay turn her back on Daphne and her whole family (since they have always put Daphne before Bay) and choose Travis.

At least, Travis has been good to Bay, since he found out about what happened with Tank. I'd rather see Bay be with someone who is good to her than to be with the family who is not.

The Afterbuzz TV co-hosts also thought Regina will choose Eric over Luca. I tend to think Regina will choose Luca, but I guess we will see.

So what does everyone think? What will happen in the end?

We know that Lily and Toby will be happy together with Carlton in the end. We know that John and Kathryn will be happy together in the end.

How about Daphne? Will she reunite with Mingo? She didn't really give off any vibes of being serious about Chris. I predict Daphne will reunite with Mingo somehow.

I cannot imagine Bay being with Emmett, after everything that has happened this season. I'm guessing Emmett will help Bay be with Travis somehow.

So do we think Bay will choose to go to Tokyo to be with Travis? It sure beats staying in Kansas City with a family that doesn't treat her very well and isn't known for being a mecca for tattoo artists. I imagine Bay will do better with tattooing in Tokyo, like she did in Beijing.

She doesn't have college to keep her in KC either. She'd finally get to move away with a guy, unlike when she wanted to go to Germany with Ty and to LA with Emmett.

If you have time, make predictions for these characters:

BAY:

DAPHNE:

EMMETT:

MELODY:

REGINA:

TRAVIS:

I'd love to read what people think might happen!

Honestly I think Bay may not stay with Travis I think she will encourgage him to pursue his dream of baseball since she i didnt get the chance to pursue her art.

I guess we'll see. It could go any way.

BAY: I kind of wish she would go to Tokyo with Travis. It would be a cool adventure, and I could see her becoming an anime artist or manga artist or something like that... It kind of fits with the aesthetic of her axe-girl street art, I think! I could see young people in Japan really appreciating Bay's art beyond just tattoo art. I would also kind of it love it because it would decouple Bay from Daphne... I feel like she could soar if she wasn't always entangled in family issues. She needs time to figure out what she wants for herself, and who she is beyond just being Daphne's Switch-ster.

However, I'm afraid that isn't going to happen. I'm afraid Bay won't want to leave her family, especially Daphne. That would mean she is going to break up with Travis, since I suspect he will go to Tokyo (more on that below). I'm not sure what's going to happen with her art, but I think we'll be given some kind of time jump to see her achieve success in tattoo art.

DAPHNE: Well, obviously, Daphne is going to become a wonderful, perfect little doctor. We're going to have a heart-warming scene of her helping a deaf pediatric patient or something. (Ugh! Can you tell how bitter I am? :rolleyes:) I think she's going to end up with Mingo, although Chris is also a possibility - but I think since the audience has had more time to connect with Mingo, and they have more history together, I imagine Mingo will be the one.

EMMETT: I'm really at a loss to imagine what the writers are going to do with him. I guess his depression will somehow be resolved..? I think we're going to be shown that there's something hopeful in his future, like maybe getting excited about a job opportunity that's related to the film industry, or maybe taking some courses locally. I guess it's possible he'll be paired with Ally, although we don't really know enough to care about her. I guess the writers could present it as a message that Bay and Emmett's relationship was meant to be, even if only as a route to Emmett finally meeting Ally, i.e. "it all turns out for the best", although I personally would find that cheap and disingenuous... :facepalm:

If he were to reunite with Bay after Travis left for Tokyo, that would be even more cringe-worthy to me... I just cannot see a way to make that feel good. It would seem like Emmett was Bay's last resort or consolation prize, rather than a choice. Also, at this point, Emmett has lost so much of his original appeal: he doesn't have a job, school, or friends, he lives at home, he has no confidence... It was bold and exciting when the writers originally paired him with Bay, because even though he was Deaf, which some people would view as a disadvantage, he was so sure of himself, he was a musician and a photographer... but now, he barely has an identity except as Bay's ex-boyfriend. :(

MELODY: We've seen so little of her lately that I don't even know what storylines there are that need to be resolved. I guess we need to see her be at peace with where Emmett and Travis are in their lives. I think we will see that by the end.

REGINA: Ugh. Honestly, I want her to choose Eric, just to finally own it and act on the way that she feels, which is that her men constantly matter more to her than her daughters (especially more than Bay). I think it would be completely insane for a woman with two daughters to get a new identity and move to another country to live incognito, presumably to very rarely if ever return, and very rarely if ever see her daughters... but, I kind of wish that she would do it, since that would at least be true to who she is. She would rather play house with Eric and play mother to Will than get to know her real daughter, Bay, with whom she already missed out on so much.

I don't know whether that's actually going to happen, although the summary for Episode 10 kind of suggests it might. If Regina were an actual person in my life, I would tell her to stay put and try to build/strengthen her relationships with her daughters, but hey... :rolleyes:

TRAVIS: I think Travis is going to choose to go to Tokyo. It seems to be his last big chance to succeed in professional baseball, and he's always been so aware of having limited opportunities because of his upbringing and deafness, so I don't think he's going to want to pass this up. I think he will try to convince Bay to go. I'm afraid she won't. It's not that I want their relationship to continue long-term, necessarily, but I just think she needs to get away from her family's influence to figure out her own priorities.

After the emotional scenes we've had with Travis, I don't think the writers will want to show him to be heartbroken about having to leave Bay, so I think they'll portray it as Travis realizing he needs to focus on his career now, and being grateful he had this relationship with Bay, but understanding that he needs to move on. In real life, I don't think that's very realistic... I think for someone like Travis, who's been through so many struggles and hasn't had very much support, Bay and her family (well, John) would have been a real lifeline, plus Bay was his first serious love. I don't think it's easy to give something like that up. Plus, it's not very realistic that he would be comfortable in Japan, where he couldn't even lip-read in most cases, and where he couldn't communicate with the Deaf community either. Still, I think that's probably what the writers will go for.

It would be a COOL adventure for Bay. I could see young people in Japan appreciating Bay's art, too.

And I agree. Bay could soar if she wasn't entangled in family issues and Daphne's ongoing mess of a life.

I agree. I don't think Bay will leave her family, as much as it makes sense that she SHOULD. Travis or no Travis, Bay needs to break away.

I, too, think Travis will go to Tokyo, and he and Bay will break up.

I don't think we'll see a time jump at all, but it would be cool if we did!

I think Mingo will be The One, too. But I firmly believe Daphne will decide she is not cut out to be a doctor. Let's face it, the girl is not meant to go that route. She may find something to do in the healthcare field, but I don't think she is meant to be a doctor and I doubt that the show ends with her doubling down to continue pursuing a career in medicine.

I see Daphne going into sports medicine as an athletic trainer, so she can continue working with her dad and with Mingo.

I would LOVE to see an Emmett and Ally connection, because they have mad chemistry together (from their two second scene), and Sean Berdy makes me believe in love. :in_love:

That tattoo magazine "Live Ink" may offer Emmett a job on their staff. I would believe that. Or he could go back to LA for film school. That'd be nice! I'd love for him to take Bay with him now.

I suppose the writers could present the message that Bay & Emmett's relationship was meant to be, in order to lead Emmett to Ally (and to lead Bay to Travis), but Lizzy Weiss was just tweeting about how disingenuous she finds This Is Us, because everything on that show seems "meant to be" for its characters.

I disagree with Lizzy Weiss about that. While a "meant-to-be" format may (or may not) be disingenuous, I don't feel that is the message of This Is Us at all. To me, their writers are not saying everything is meant to be.

In one of my all-time favorite TED Talks, Andrew Solomon opens the talk by saying:

As a student of adversity, I've been struck over the years by how some people with major challenges seem to draw strength from them. And I've heard the popular wisdom that that has to do with finding meaning. And for a long time, I thought the meaning was out there, some great truth waiting to be found.

But over time, I've come to feel that the truth is irrelevant. We call it "finding meaning," but we might better call it "forging meaning."

My last book was about how families manage to deal with various kinds of challenging or unusual offspring. And one of the mothers I interviewed, who had two children with multiple severe disabilities, said to me, "People always give us these little sayings like, 'God doesn't give you any more than you can handle.' But children like ours are not preordained as a gift. They're a gift because that's what we have chosen."

We make those choices all our lives.

That's what This Is Us shows me. It illustrates how people can take a lifetime worth of heartache and forge meaning for themselves from the experiences. In a million years, I would never believe that the writers are saying one of Jack and Rebecca's three babies was "meant" to die, so Randall could come to live with their family. That may be what Lizzy Weiss sees, but it isn't what I see.

I like your analysis of this situation. That IS who Emmett was in the beginning, and until just a few days ago, I felt a Bay & Emmett reunion would feel cringe-worthy, too.

But now, I believe Lizzy Weiss can find a way to make it NOT cringe-worthy.

Also, I feel Emmett still has an identity. I don't believe his depression robs him of that. Emmett still has his talent as a photographer and a film maker. Yes, he has hit a stumbling block with his depression, but he can be all the stronger and the more insightful for overcoming it. One of Emmett's problems, in my opinion, is that things always came too easily to him. I can remember comparing him to Hubble Gardiner in The Way We Were a few years ago. Things always came easily to Hubble, too.

Emmett does not have a job at the moment, beyond the work he may do at Chrome. But he does have talent as a mechanic and behind the camera. Plus, he has all of the charisma in the world with which to make friends. He can do it.

There is nothing that says Emmett's stint at home needs to last more than this one semester. There is nothing to say he cannot return to school full time. I believe Emmett's confidence has returned. He seemed smooth to me, when he asked Ally if he could take those pictures with her shirt open to reveal the outline of a tattoo Bay had sketched onto her chest.

As for how Lizzy Weiss will reunite Bay & Emmett without making it too cringe-worthy, I believe she will focus on two people's ability to rekindle love, rather than any "made-to-be" status or vibrations.

I don't believe it is fate controlling Bay & Emmett's destiny, as much as I believe it is their choices and their ability and willingness to accept less than perfection in each other.

That's my guess.

Me, too. And I suspect she may quit her job at the college and join her husband Gabe in whatever country he happens to be visiting.

That's true! Everything that we know about Regina says that is the decision she will make. But I think Lizzy Weiss wants to show us that Regina has finally matured, and ironically, she is going to choose to continue her relationship with someone half her age, in order to prove that to us! I could even see a Luca and Regina wedding.

I'd tell Regina to stay put, too. Eric has BAD DECISION written all over him.

I agree with all of that!

I've been thinking about this situation. Travis seems to love others, including Bay, rather shallowly. Travis did love Mary Beth, but that was a shallow love, too. I don't see Travis brokenhearted over any breakup, ever. He is the type to be sad for a few days, and then, to shake it off. Otherwise, Travis would not have said he regrets sacrificing his spot on the baseball team to go to China for Bay. Romantic relationships are not the most important thing to Travis.

If this situation was real life, I don't think Travis would be able to continue a relationship with Bay, even if he stayed in KC.

Travis needs professional help to deal with the years of abuse and subsequent anger. He is not ready for a serious relationship, and I do not believe Bay is mature enough to stand by Travis through all of that. A forty year old would have difficulty. I don't see how Bay could do it at twenty.

Bay's experience with Tank allowed her insight to see Travis through the confrontation with his mother, but Travis still has far more darker places to explore. I don't feel Bay is up for that, nor do I feel she should be. Bay has already sacrificed to help Daphne. It is time that Bay begins to put herself first for a change.

I feel the same way about Emmett, too. If for some reason he is still struggling with his depression, then I do not feel as though Bay needs to sacrifice her future to help him. If he has pulled things together on his own, though, I could see a relationship with Emmett as being right for Bay again. I don't have a problem with the fact that they've hurt each other in the past. I see that as part of life and love.