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feignedperfect · 6 years

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How do you feel about Hal

SUCH A GOOD QUESTION i have so many thoughts on hal omg . like at first i was not a fan at all bc he comes off like a total tool and at first glance it seems like he and alice really don’t like each other much . i got the vibe that they might love each other on some level bc they have kids together and they’ve spent so long together & definitely care about each other at least but they don’t like each other at all ?? like any time she does anything that’s remotely ’ alice like ’ he’s so put out and its just like ‘ why did you marry her then ?? ’ to me it seemed like a lot of the pressure she puts on herself must be from him and that perfection was a big deal to hal and then ofc the stuff with polly but actually since i’ve been rewatching i’ve changed my mind a lot .

like he still isn’t my favourite character or anything but i’ve been trying to look at it from a different lens and i’ve decided he’s not that bad. like obviously he still has a lot of faults but almost everyone on the show is an asshole so how harshly can we really judge at this point ?? lmao

we haven’t got to see too much of hal yet really, so i may end up being wrong but rn i think he’s a decent guy who loves his family but is also very stubborn. i think from what we’ve seen of him its clear he places a lot of value into FAMILY LEGACY, which was likely instilled in him quite young, and that’s what influences a lot of his poor choices. he didn’t tell alice or the kids about being related to the blossoms because he’s been told its a shameful family secret , one he may have intended to die with him . like - dumbass move dude get your shit together but idk maybe he was trying to protect them from it in a way ?? idk but srsly bro if you wanted your kid to stop dating her cousin - maybe yk tell them they’re cousins ?????

and then booking the abortion the way he did was obvs about the incest which he eventually copped to and you can see when it dawn’s on alice and she’s like ‘so that’s why’ and he’s just ‘yeah alice, THAT’S why’ to me it felt like there was a lot unspoken there and that was his way of letting her know that he never would have had the circumstances been any different. which actually makes me pretty curious what his reaction might have been had she gotten pregnant to anyone else - maybe he would have supported her keeping it after knowing how much it hurt alice losing their son ? who knows man

and then on to he and alice : i think their relationship is honestly the most complicated and layered on the show and needs to be explored more for sure bc they have such a big issue with communication to the point of being heartbreaking, but they also seem to have this incredible ability to forgive at the same time ( if not completely then at least enough to move forward ) and this weird dependancy on each other i find really interesting.

it’s easy to write them off as a marriage of convenience but it just doesn’t make sense to me for alice, being who she is to marry/stay with someone she DIDN’T LOVE, its not in her character.

like what happened with polly —- she was DEVASTATED to find out he’d done that after all they’d been through. she was actually ready to walk away even though she’d been able to forgive him enough for doing it to her to marry him and have two more children.

then she finds out the reason and how the two of them were cousins etc and you can see her face when he says it, this wave of understanding goes over her and you can almost see her decide to forgive him and after that they go get polly and he’s moved back in. and it can’t just be for the sake of keeping up an image, she had kicked him out already, the illusion of perfect was over so there was no reason to take him back unless she GENUINELY loved him.

and while some of the things he does have me side eying him hard af i’ve started to see the way he talks to alice ( not when they’re fighting, just in general ) as them just being MarriedTM lol like yes he rolls his eyes at her a lot but i don’t think its about him not liking her anymore, i think its just that they’ve been together so long now that he’s just like ‘ omg not again really pls ’ lmao but not even in a bad way . and i love that when she starts going overboard he’ll be like ‘alice’ or touch her or something and she’ll calm down and then like when they were in that city hall meeting he’s just sitting with is arm around her, not touching her but theres that closeness. then in the deleted scene after the meeting she has her arms linked around his which i think was really cute.

or like the scene where penelope slaps her , i loved seeing them interact there because he just puts his hand on her and he’s making sure she’s okay and talking her down, etc —- mostly, i feel, because he knows if she does hit penelope she’s gonna hate hearing people gossip about her etc bc she’s so conscious of that.

i’ve also been trying to think of why tf she would stay w him after he had her give up their first kid, which she views as her biggest regret and i feel like he probably visited her a lot at the sisters and just sat w her and talked to her about whatever she wanted / about what their future would be like / helped her study so she didn’t fall behind bc she probably would have wanted to get a scholarship for college and just tried to be there for her however he could and maybe that helped her get through it IDK

the only thing i can think of is that she honestly really loved him and she knew he was right about them not being ready for a baby even though he handled it badly and at the time she was just young and thinking more about her own future. maybe it wasn’t until later that she started to regret it? like maybe when she had polly that she really started to regret not keeping him

i’m sure she felt some regret before that of course. felt that pull to him as her child but she was still a child herself really and i think it would’ve been seeing polly and all the milestones that come with having a child that would have made her realise what she missed out on with her first / would have made her wish she had have kept him.

i think when she was pregnant it would’ve felt like the end of the world and she would’ve had to give up all her dreams to have him and she was probably scared she’d end up living in a trailer park etc in the lifestyle she grew up in , but then after polly she thought differently. she realised well i could’ve had him in daycare or gone to a community college that would’ve been more lenient so she could’ve managed both etc.

i feel like I’m not even answering your question anymore at this point lmao

i think his parents would have played a huge part and you can tell by the way he told that story about his grandfather he’s very family orientated so pressure from his parents probably influenced him A LOT but i also think had she decided to keep the baby he’d have stuck by her. i think it was his parents offered to pay for an abortion and probably paid to have her go to the sisters. and i think it would have meant a lot to her if he came to visit / kept coming back hat in hand trying to make amends and keep their relationship going bc she probably assumed he’d want nothing to do with her after. i feel like he’d have been really apologetic about the whole thing though.

i also feel like his mother is probably really intense and thats where alice takes on a lot of her 'perfect wife/mother’ act bc a lot of the show centres around the becoming your parents sort of thing but for alice i feel like it was mother-in-law. you can tell all perfect Mrs. Cooper posturing is very very put on so she has to be getting it from somewhere. and i feel like hal definitely became his father unintentionally with the way he’s holding onto old family feuds and offering to pay for polly’s abortion. i don’t think he would have been like that as a younger man.

i’ve also been thinking a lot about how alice and hal might’ve gotten together in the first place and i like the idea that it was because of her writing that he took a real interest. like he would’ve taken notice of her already bc she’s beautiful but probably wrote her off bc she was from the southside and idk maybe one day they’ve all had to read their own piece to the class or their work has been passed around etc and he’s realised theres a lot more to her than just the southside.

i’m really curious why he originally took interest in her bc we can pretty much guess her reason at least originally would’ve been this hope of having a better life but i think there must’ve been a lot more to him as well we just haven’t seen yet bc otherwise i think she could’ve easily had her pick of northside boys.

and from what i can tell they seem to be a marriage of equals for the most part, which i’m sure is something thats really important to her and that makes me like them together.

#anonymous #i actually left out some things i think can u believe #idk how it got this long im sorry lmao #♛ ❛ ––– THIS JUST IN! ( answered. )#♛ ❛ ––– WHO KNEW. ( headcanons. )#♛ ❛ ––– NOT QUITE PRINCE CHARMING BUT CLOSE ENOUGH. ( hal. )#♛ ❛ ––– OTP : HAVEN’T YOU HEARD? WE’RE THE PERFECT FAMILY. ( alice + hal. )

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