This post contains spoilers for You season two. Proceed at your own risk.
Have you recovered from all the twists and turns in Youseason two on Netflix yet? It was quite a ride watching Joe carve out a new life for himself in Los Angeles as “Will” and become obsessed with a new woman—the aptly-named, Love.
But as you know, Love isn’t exactly the sweet, organic juice-drinking Angeleno she originally appeared to be. By the end of the season, we came to learn that she, too, is a murderer who fundamentally believes her actions are justified. She’s just protecting the people she loves, right? Love also drops a big bombshell on Joe: She’s pregnant. In the final scenes, we see the couple moving into a new house with her baby bump on display.
Fans, however, have a theory about said pregnancy that has a lot of evidence behind it. They think the baby isn’t actually Joe’s, but her ex Milo’s. During a breakup after Love discovers Joe/Will has been lying about his identity, she briefly reconnects with her old flame, who also happens to be her dead ex-husband’s best friend.
Honestly, this theory tracks. It’s weird Joe doesn’t question the timing of Love’s pregnancy at all or the fact that Love blurts out this news in an attempt to save her own life.
” I have a very strong theory for You season 3 and your thoughts on it. I believe the baby is not Joe’s it’s Milo’s. After Love broke up with him she had sex with Milo. Love and Joe didn’t get back together until he was getting ready to leave LA in the final episodes,” one fan tweeted. Another posted, “Since Love is a professional liar, what if the baby is actually Milo’s and her saying she told him to use protection is just an excuse for Joe to stay with her ?,”
As You has proven in its two seasons, no theory is too wild or twist too weird, but we’ll just have to wait and see how this all turns out. While no official announcement has been made regarding season three, we’re keeping our fingers crossed.
TV crossover events are usually just a ratings ploy, but tonight’s Big Bang Theory proved to be the exception. The episode delivered a satisfying—and emotional—arc and moved the story forward, something that’s all-too important as Big Bang approaches the last half of its final season.
This episode, titled “The VCR Illumination,” was also the perfect promo for anyone not watching Young Sheldon (the smart, charming spin-off starring Iain Armitage as the pint-size prodigy). In tonight’s episode, young Sheldon pays grown Sheldon (Jim Parsons) a visit via VHS tape, but it’s the appearance of Lance Barber’s George Cooper Sr. (as Sheldon’s dad) that brilliantly links the present with the past.
The episode begins as a continuation from the most recent episode—”The Citation Negation”—when Sheldon and Amy discovered that Super-Asymmetry is inherently flawed and “does not bear the weight of further examination.” It was devastating news for the newlyweds, who had spent the better part of the last year working on their theory.
The passage of time hasn’t helped either, at least when it comes to Sheldon. In the days that have passed, he’s understandably still mourning the loss of this scientific breakthrough. It’s shaken him so much that he starts questioning everything about himself. Asparagus? Maybe he likes it after all. Jazz music? Perhaps it is music to one’s ear. When Amy points out that these are all things he hates, he says, “I thought so too, but I also thought Super-Asymmetry was a good idea, so what else am I wrong about?” (To be honest, I kind of like this Sheldon.)
Amy worries that if he’s re-thinking everything, how long will it be until he re-thinks her? (Don’t be silly, Amy; you’re still the best thing ever to happen to him).
PHOTO: Bill Inoshita
That’s when Leonard remembers that Sheldon has kept an emergency VHS tape in the safe with a pep talk from his younger self. Leonard gives it to Amy, who plays it for Sheldon; and for the first time, viewers see young Sheldon and older Sheldon in the same scene. On the tape, young Sheldon says he’s guessing something bad happened, otherwise why else would he be watching this (“I’m so smart!” grown Sheldon remarks). But as soon as young Sheldon begins to dish out advice (“Never forget, no matter how bad things seem….”) the tape switches to one of George Sr.’s football games. Yep, “taping over syndrome” is a struggle that ’80s kids will never forget. Sheldon is angry; when Amy asks what she can do to help, he barks that she can build a time machine to go back and tell his younger self to give up because nothing is going to work out how he wants.
Leonard and Penny, realizing their friend is full in crisis mode, call in back-up in the form of Dr. Beverly Hofstadter. She says Sheldon needs to grieve and suggests they throw a funeral of sorts. Sheldon thinks it’s a ridiculous idea…until he finds out Beverly made the suggestion.
So Sheldon, Amy, Leonard, and Penny all head to the bathroom for a weird makeshift funeral and end up catching the shower curtain on fire. Prior to that, Sheldon gives a moving eulogy in which he says, “I know this is just a scientific theory, but it was more than that. It described the universe in a new and beautiful way. I want that to be the universe we live in. But I guess it’s not.”
PHOTO: Bill Inoshita
Later that night, Sheldon wakes up to the sound of Amy in the living room re-watching the old VHS tape. She wants to see if she can find anything further from young Sheldon’s speech, but adult Shelton says it doesn’t matter. It turns out he remembers everything he said in the tape. Amy wonders why he can’t just rely on that. “It would have meant more coming from me,” he says in total seriousness. (Can’t argue with genius, I suppose.)
But then, in a miracle equivalent to figuring out a Rubik’s cube, the tape also has a recording of George Sr.’s pep-talk to his players during halftime. On it, George Sr. says, “I know we’re down by a lot, and we’re probably not going to win this one. In fact, we’re definitely not going to win this one. But we’re not going to quit either. And if we do lose, that doesn’t make you losers. You learn as much about who you are and what you’re made of from failing as you do from success. Maybe more. So you can spend the next half feeling sorry for yourselves or you can get out there and give ‘em hell.”
Sheldon’s older brother Georgie (another fun cameo, this time by Young Sheldon‘s Montanta Jordan) makes an appearance as one of the football players and yells, “Yeah, give ’em hell!” But George Sr. says, “You watch your mouth, your mother’s watching!” Sheldon just so happens to pause the tape at the exact moment George Sr. is looking straight at the camera; it’s almost as if George Sr. is telepathically sending a message to his now-grown son.
PHOTO: Bill Inoshita
But just as Amy is prepared to write off George Sr.’s speech as a nice pep-talk that didn’t really work (Sheldon points out that his dad’s team lost that day), Sheldon says maybe it did. “I’ve been acting like the game is over,” he says. “But maybe it’s only half time. There’s a lot more physics left to play.” Amy is impressed. I mean, it is the first time Sheldon’s ever used a sports metaphor, but that’s not all.
”It’s interesting,” he continues. “I always thought that my father’s journey and mine were so different, but he also faced failure and setbacks. Maybe our lives mirrored each other more than I thought.”
This is the point in the show where the sweeping movie soundtrack would start to take over, but we’re not there yet. Amy remarks that from one viewpoint, Sheldon and George Sr.’s lives are asymmetrical; from another vantage point, they’re symmetrical. “Sheldon, what if symmetry and asymmetry are observer relative?” she asks. “That would mean the Russian paper was right…”
By the way, if you’re still following all this science talk, you’re much smarter than I am.
Sheldon realizes that Amy’s on to something big. The Russian paper may have been right—that Super-Asymmetry is inherently flawed—but Sheldon notes that’s only from one perspective. If they look at it from a deeper view with more dimensions, their theory still stands. Not only does it still stand, Amy notes, but, “it might be a bigger idea than the one we were originally proposing.”
Sheldon—overcome by an enormous sense of urgency—tells Amy to run and get her laptop. “We have a paper to fix!”
Then, in perhaps the series’ most touching moment to date, Sheldon looks back at the TV screen—still paused on the image of George Sr. looking straight into the camera—and says, “Thanks, dad. We’re going to give ’em hell.” In just those two lines, Jim Parsons manages to both break your heart and put it back together. And then, in absolute silence, Sheldon turns off the light, walks to the bedroom, and the scene fades to black.
John McCain—Republican senator, former POW, and two-time presidential candidate—has died after a year-long battle with brain cancer. He was 81.
“Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28 p.m. on August 25, 2018,” his office said in a statement. On Thursday, McCain’s family revealed he was discontinuing treatment.
Minutes after the news broke online, the senator’s daughter Meghan McCain, 33, released her own statement on Twitter, writing that she “was with him at his end, as he was with me at my beginning.” She concluded with a C.S. Lewis quote, from the author’s 1956 children’s fantasy novel The Last Battle: “The dream is ended: This is the morning.”
The View co-host has been open about the hardship of dealing with an ill parent. “I’m not the same person I was when my dad was first diagnosed,” she told Glamour earlier this month. “My father is the sun in my universe … He’s the absolute center.”
In July 2017, McCain revealed that he had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer that watchers of American politics know well—the same disease killed Senator Ted Kennedy and Beau Biden, the oldest son of former vice president Joe Biden. Meghan McCain told Glamour she joined her father——publicly nicknamed “The Maverick” at doctor visits, waking up at 5 a.m. for his radiation appointments and had no intention of taking the View gig when it came her way. It was her father who insisted she go for it, saying she’d be “insane to pass it up.”
PHOTO: Dimitrios Kambouris
In Apri 2018, McCain was back in the hospital, and Meghan said doctors warned her it was time to initiate any conversations she needed to have with her father, though she hesitated. “We’ve done that,” she told her dad’s team. “He knows I love him more than anything, and I know he loves me more than anything. There’s nothing else. What’s next?”
Talking to Glamour, Megan also was forthcoming about how she, her father’s only daughter, received no special treatment growing up; the Maverick had been as strict with her as he was with her brothers. Why hadn’t she been given status—a daughter’s reprieve? But his relentlessness, she knows, made her resilient. “I realize now he did it so I could survive this.”
Before I was cast on This Is Us, I was at a point in my career where I had done pilot after pilot after pilot, pouring my heart and soul into shows that just weren’t working. You find yourself not knowing where you’re going to work geographically, whether it’s New York or Toronto or Vancouver, or wherever. I have a daughter, and I wasn’t getting any younger, so I thought, I want a job at home in L.A. that I’m proud of and can see my daughter every single day and be happy.
Then a fellow actor friend of mine sent me the script for This Is Us and said, “Dan Fogleman just wrote you in a pilot.” I remember reading the part of Kevin and thinking, “Oh my God, he thinks that’s who I am?” Kevin’s in a spot where he’s being perceived in a certain way by the people around him, but it’s the opposite of the way he sees himself. I was going through a bit of that as well. My friend didn’t mean to hurt my feelings by comparing me to Kevin, but it did hit home for me. I saw Kevin as a guy surrounded by people who tell him how great he is, yet he feels completely alone. Kevin and I are different, but we’ve both gone through pain and suffering. Everyone’s had pain.
This season, the Pearson kids lose their father at that age when they need him. How do you make up for that absence? In a weird way, This Is Us makes you want to stay alive as long as you can. Life is delicate. My daughter is 13—so, I slow everything down. We took a flight recently, and I had a conversation with her that I thought was really important. I said, “I just want you to know some things…indulge me for five minutes.” We just had a really nice, slow conversation. It wasn’t any new information, just things I thought she should know.
In a weird way, This Is Us makes you want to stay alive as long as you can.
When she saw Kevin really suffering this season, she would call me after those heavy episodes if we weren’t together. Two scenes that come to mind are when Kevin was on the football field crying and at Jack’s tree, when Kevin’s talking to his dad. She wanted to hear my voice and make sure everything was OK. She said, “That didn’t look like acting.” It was a lot for her, and I wasn’t even sure she should watch that. It made her think, like it would for anyone, what would you do it you lost your mom or your dad? At a young age, it’s not supposed to happen that way. So, she checks in and wants to hear my voice and make sure I’m not crying and OK.
I get it, because I’ve been affected by things that Kevin has done. I get lost in the moments. When I did that scene with Milo—[Ed note: When Kevin hallucinates thinking Jack is on stage giving him an award]—I think of my daughter. I think about how much I’ve taught her and what a sliver it has been so far. I think of all the things I want to teach her and see her go through. I want to walk her down the aisle. I want to be there when her kids are born. I want to call her when her boyfriend breaks up with her, or talk her through a breakup. I want to teach her how to drive. All this stuff. I want to take her to college and make sure she knows everything is OK and I’m only a phone call away. I want to pick her up from college and bring her home. I want to be there at the airport.
Can you imagine missing all of that? So, for me, that’s what I was tapping into when I was doing those scenes with Milo as Jack. To imagine Kevin being in a place where if he can experience just one more embrace…you just want one more little moment.
I try to make sure my daughter has a great relationship with her grandparents, her stepmom, her mom, and her friends. I’m trying to give her every single thing that I never had—and I had a good childhood. I just want to make sure she has all those things and keeps her feet on the ground.
I love my own dad very much; he’s a fair man, but he’s a hard man. I think he does the opposite sometimes of what I do with my daughter. I will praise, praise, praise her, and he’s old school. He comes from that old school generation where it’s like, I’ll let you know when something’s wrong and maybe pat you on the back every once in a while. You know when you’re doing good. I don’t need to tell you. I can tell that he’s proud, and he’s said as much. But up until this role, I don’t think he’s seen me do anything like this. I can tell that he’s a little bit shocked. So the fact that he thinks This Is Us is the best show on television…to me, that’s really cool.
PHOTO: Disney Parks
I pull from both of my parents and try to be as loving as I can with my daughter, but also understand we’re not always going to be best friends. I don’t remember the last time I got upset with her. It’s hard to get upset when they do so many things right. I want her to enjoy her life, but also make the right decisions. There are things I could circumvent to make sure she doesn’t go down the wrong path, but you have to make mistakes too. I don’t know how to be a kid anymore, so I’m kind of learning from her as well. They have it tough. There’s a lot going on with social media. Everything has changed. But it’s a team effort. Hopefully, I help her be a better kid. That’s my job.
I’ve always been a really sensitive guy, but I hope This Is Us slowed me down a little bit. I try not to focus on the things that are out of my control, which is most things. I certainly don’t worry about things the way I used to. It’s nice to be part of something that proves what you thought you could do for years, and then you finally get a chance to do it. To be given the opportunity to do something and go, “This is what I’ve been telling people forever that I can do”…well, that’s awesome. And now I better do it.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Now that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have made it official (in front of the queen, Oprah, and the rest of the world), it looks like it’s finally time for him to meet Markle’s father, Thomas. If you somehow forgot, Thomas was initially supposed to walk Meghan down the aisle at her May 19 royal wedding, but after a paparazzi scandal and subsequent health problems, he was unable to attend. Now that he’s in recovery post-surgery, though, it seems the Duke and Duchess of Sussex may be planning a visit to his home in Mexico.
“I hear one of the things they want to do sooner than later — and now that they’re married — is to go and see Thomas Markle, who is recovering from a heart operation,” royal expert Katie Nicholl told Entertainment Tonight. “We don’t know when this trip might happen. … I’m hearing from people close to Meghan and Harry that they’re very keen to do it.”
Understandably, Prince Harry reportedly “feels it’s very important that he gets to meet Thomas,” (according to Nicholl). She added, “Of course, Meghan — who’s been really concerned about her father’s health — is keen to go see him as soon as possible.”
Meanwhile, Prince Harry has spent time with his mother-in-law, Doria Ragland, who was at the royal wedding and spent the preceding days getting to know Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth. In the couple’s engagement interview, Prince Harry called Ragland “amazing.” In the same interview, Markle confirmed that her husband-to-be had not met her dad. “He’s talked to my dad a few times, hasn’t been able to meet him just yet, but it’s all been — it’s all been worth every effort,” she said.
Of course, it makes sense that Prince Harry is eager to meet this father-in-law, especially in the wake of what happened in the weeks leading up to the wedding. And it’s likely the feeling is mutual. Thomas issued a heartbreaking statement on the day of the wedding, expressing his regret for not being there to walk his daughter down the aisle. “The service was beautiful and it’s history. I will always regret not being able to be there and not being able to hold my daughter’s hand,” he told TMZ. “… Now I pray that Harry and Meghan can go on a nice honeymoon and rest and relax, and all of my relatives will just shut up about everything.”
Walking down the aisle with your dad on your wedding day is one of those traditions that many women start to imagine from the moment they first fully appreciate the meaning of the word bride. Little did we know when we were kids making our dads play pretend wedding that being “given away” means something much different now than it once did.
Back when marriages were still mostly arranged, a father walked his daughter down the aisle as a way to keep the groom from backing out of the deal; a hand-off from one male-dominated home to the next. The wedding itself marked a transfer of responsibility and financial liability. In a sense, once the ceremony was over, the bride (a word which, by the way, is etymologically entangled with the verb cook) was officially no longer her father’s problem.
Of course, now things are different. Weddings can be whatever we want them to be; if we elect to enact traditions with sexist roots, we can rewrite what they mean in a modern context—or we can throw them out the window altogether.
But the truth is that the “father of the bride” element of most ceremonies has largely stuck, and when that doesn’t happen, it’s often a decision that winds up under the magnifying glass. Just look at what’s happening with Meghan Markle: Her father, Thomas Markle, was initially set to be on the arm of the royal bride-to-be at St. George’s Chapel on Saturday. Then a heart condition, followed by a small scandal thanks to a series of staged photographs, kicked in; as of Thursday the official report from the Kensington Palace press team reflects that he will be absent from the ceremony.
There’s a kind of irony to the fact that a bride who is carrying centuries of monastic history on her shoulders—and whose “fairy-tale wedding” will be watched by the world—won’t be participating in this particular element of ceremonial tradition. No doubt the fact that her father won’t be there is a bruise on her heart. To add insult to injury, she’ll bear the scrutiny surrounding his absence as well.
It’s a weight I can relate to. From the time I was very small, I knew my dad would play an integral role in my wedding day. In fact, I was devastated when a girl in my kindergarten class alerted me to the fact that you couldn’t grow up and marry your father. So I set my sights on finding someone who embodied all my dad’s best qualities instead.
When I found that person, four years ago, seated across a conference table in a Manhattan office building, it didn’t take long for me to begin daydreaming about what our wedding would look like someday. He and I are marrying in November. But what has changed in the years since is that it’s only in my dreams that my father will be there.
I was 27 when my dad was diagnosed with cancer; he was only 61. I remember getting the phone call and collapsing to the ground; I remember my dad telling me that it would be all right, before putting my stepmom on the line. Chemotherapy was tough, but so was my father. When my sister got married, a year later, he was in remission. His hair was a soft gray fuzz that day, and he looked so handsome, so proud, in his suit. By the following June, when the flowers he had planted in the backyard were bursting up through the ground, he was gone.
The “father of the bride” element of most ceremonies has largely stuck, and when that doesn’t happen, it’s often a decision that winds up under the magnifying glass.
When my partner and I became engaged this winter, people immediately wanted to know what kind of wedding we planned to have: where, when, how many people. They wanted to know what type of dress I would wear and what song would play when I walked down the aisle. They wanted to know: band or DJ? And the precipice of something so exciting, it is lovely to be asked.
But it’s also been difficult to explain, especially to people who did not already know, why we are not getting married in my hometown, where I most acutely feel my father’s absence; it is hard to watch a face fall when I share why my sister will be the one to give me away. I’m sorry, they say, and I worry I’ve ruined a happy moment—that somehow I’ve spoiled their joy.
Lately I’ve taken to skimming over certain details, saying that yes, we’re having a big wedding, but no, we won’t be doing a lot of the traditional things: a father-daughter dance, staged family portraits. A walk down the aisle. The responses to those decisions span the gamut, from raised eyebrows (my Italian aunts) to elopement encouragement (“Wouldn’t it be better to save the money instead?”).
There’s another that stands out, though. “Congratulations!” for eschewing retro traditions, some have said, a “Good for you guys!” hurrah. “It’s 2018, a woman doesn’t need to be ‘given away’ by her father,” someone who didn’t know better, said. And the thing is: I agree.
Five years ago I might have skipped any ritual that might suggest that I, or any woman, could be passed like a possession from one man to another. It’s the symbolism, I would have said, my feminist ire up, even if the foundational meaning has changed. I would have found some other way to honor my dad during our ceremony, to acknowledge the massively outsize role he has played in my life. I would nodded at tradition without bending to it. I would cite more progressive traditions like how, in Sweden, the newlyweds-to-be walk down the aisle together. Maybe I would have skipped the whole damned thing and insisted we head to City Hall instead.
There are limitless ways to be a bride, and—unless we are destined to get married in St. George’s Chapel—it’s a choice we get to make for ourselves, which is neither better or worse for being filtered through the sieve of feminism. Now, if the only way I could have my dad back is if he “gave” me to my husband…I would be overjoyed to let him. What has become clear to me since is some traditions are more than rituals; they’re about making a memory. And in the end, I personally cannot imagine anything mattering more. I have no doubt that the royal bride-to-be will carry her own pain in her heart, looking back on her photos and not finding her father there.
I don’t know that my father would have called himself a feminist. What I do know is that he was the first person (along with our mom) who told my sister and me that we could be whatever we wanted to be and that the greatest risks I’ve taken in my life were made possible because I believed that, if I looked over my shoulder, my dad would be standing there behind me. He taught me how to change a taillight and how to stand my ground. He showed me what respectful, compassionate masculinity looks like, because that’s how he always behaved.
What I know now is what I knew as a little girl: that he was the best man to have by my side. For the rest of his life and most of mine, that’s where I could always find him. It’s where I still see him now.
