the transcript for 615 isn't out yet so my sleuthing abilities are somewhat limited but i cannot believe how heavyhanded they were last night! about not only the running theme of eddie & time, but also the running theme of buck & luck.
we clocked (ha) the eddie & time theme awhile back, but if you rewatch s5&s6, there's a running theme of luck, too, and it's centered squarely around buck. it's a little quieter, sure, but it's absolutely there.
something about the way that eddie's root traumas all stem from the pressure he was under, this persistent pressure to grow up faster than he should have. an hourglass turned over and the sand running out, minutes and seconds falling grain by grain from cradle to grave. man of the house by age twelve, a husband and father and soldier by nineteen, a widow by twenty six. he's lived a remarkable amount of life in a remarkably short time, if you think about it. but he never had the time or the chance to point his life in a new direction, stuck on a set of predetermined tracks and speeding milestone to milestone through a life of inevitable conclusions and preset outcomes he never had the chance to choose, living his life for others instead of for himself, feeling like he's running out of time, like his window of opportunity to live authentically for himself is slipping out of reach. he's spent his whole life racing the clock, really- can i just get a little damn time?
something about the way that buck's root traumas all stem from this tumbling domino effect of misfortune, one stroke of horrible, tragic, no-good luck after another. daniel's leukemia, strike one. neither maddie nor margaret nor phillip being a match, one helluva strike two. baby buck's bone marrow graft, just...not taking, despite everything? strike three. he was born to be a 'miracle baby.' but that's the funny thing about miracles, isn't it? when you try to engineer them, all the luck runs out. so he grew up unlucky in love, unlucky in friends, unlucky in family. feeling, rightly or wrongly, like he was always the odd man out, always the one being left, always the one clinging to whatever good, bright, shiny, lucky little thing he can find, forever trying to make sense of his place in this world. of course he feels like he cheated death- in a sick, sad, tragic way, he was essentially born in a desperate attempt to cheat the looming spectre of daniel's. (of course it's understandable that parents will do anything in their power to save their child, of course the buckley parents should have gone about it better, these two things can coexist). when your life so far has been a series of unfortunate events, of course you're going to spend it chasing down every opportunity you see through your rose colored glasses to try and change that luck- even if it's too good to be true. even when the universe is screaming at you. even with a million red flags waving in the Santa Ana winds. it's a run of bad luck, but it'll turn around tomorrow. // feels like the bracelet didn't change her luck, it just made the bad luck more apocalyptic.
something about one in a million chances. something about beating the odds, surviving despite it all. something about the way that the tsunami AND the shooting AND the lighting strike are all the definition of simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
something about jinxes, and curses, and dumb luck. 'cause what is fate, anyway, if not time and luck intertwined?
now feels like a good time to remind ourselves of the last words buck and eddie exchanged before the shooting. before the moment where everything changed.
eddie: should have gotten here sooner.
buck: nah, that kid's just lucky to have met you.
something about all those funny little sayings we have about love - right person, wrong time (abby?). right time, wrong person (ali?). wrong person, wrong time (taylor?).
(only took three tries to get it right.)
and then maybe, finally, when the timing is right, if you get a little lucky-
right time, right person. and so much love.
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