you've raised me from the dead // let’s die alone together ALLISON & PATTY : EVERY EPISODE

I WOULD DIE FOR THEM

patty’s head probably: …well shit, she pays attention too

I don't understand you. Yes, you do. Probably better than anyone.

EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOUR DOING AND WATCH KEVIN CAN FUCK HIMSELF

Because like at the end of the day we’re The Audience, right? And The Audience was always part of it. The Audience was who it was all for. The Audience was the one responding and reinforcing. We were there watching even if we weren’t laughing. But Kevin is dead now, and the show is over, and no we don’t get to know if Patty and Allison get together, if Neil improves, or if Diane gets away. They don’t perform anymore. Now they have to—get to—live the rest of their lives without a laugh track or “woos” or “awws,” either in the studio or in our homes.

Patty asked where this all ends once and the answer is here. The stage will never reset again. They keep going. They will or they won’t. They’ll grow or they won’t. But when they do it’s just for themselves now, no one else is watching.

I would like to point out a few things about this clip and how it basically sets up the whole show. First of all.

It’s a Romance novel actually.

Setting up the romance part of the show being Allison and Patty

Second part the synopsis of the show basically

It’s about a woman who’s sad she’s very sad. She just wasted the last ten years of her life on this terrible marriage. It’s very depressing in the beginning. But then one day she realizes what she wants. And she has this brilliant plan. She keeps playing perfect housewife. But in the meantime-

And then here’s another important part the librarian says:

Affair with her neighbor

Which is what she does with Patty. It’s not a sexual or romantic affair or anything (yet) but there’s no denying it’s an emotional affair. They’re having an emotional affair.

Then. Another important part that applies to season 2. Especially 207.

The librarian says: Why wouldn’t she just leave.

And Allison replies with:

Maybe she doesn’t wanna leave.

Maybe this isn’t about leaving at all.

It was never about leaving. It was never about killing Kevin. It was never about Allison faking her death. It was always about Patty and Allison saving each other. And making it so they could each escape without leaving each other.

And that’s why I think that the show has to end with them finding each other again. For it to end with Patty just stuck alone again and Allison alone again would go against the whole thesis of the show. They need to find each other again and save each other. One last time. For good this time. After all. Valerie did say:

The show is about two women. And how they save each other.

Kevin Can Fuck Himself was so brilliant. Like I am in awe. It was structurally a high wire act and they pulled it off so well. Including the ending, which I did not know how they would manage but it was absolutely right.

also how important was it that we got to see how scary Kevin could be? how incredibly necessary to understand why Allison went to the lengths she went to, and how brave it was to go back and tell him she wanted a divorce, and to warn off his new girlfriend?

The Slow-Burning Queer Romance of "Kevin Can F*** Himself" - INTO

So here's this thing I wrote!

I don’t remember you ever asking me what it is that I want.

Gonna make a Tumblr dump on Kevin Can Fuck Himself and why Patty and Allison ARE in love even through everyone's already moved on.

#she has never done anything wrong in her life

Love is like a mirror. When you love another, you become their mirror and they become yours. And reflecting each other's love, you see infinity.

Does anyone else ever think about how like the specter of Allison’s bisexuality haunts the show just as much and in the same sort of way as big, painful things that are shaping the narrative but are never directly seen, like say her and Patty’s childhoods or Chuck’s violence?

It’s most apparent to me in her talking about high school—like her only friends were devoted church girls! Swimming was very important to her but those girls “didn’t really like her” because she was “too competitive,” there’s something about that (ostracization, perceived aggression, actual aggression as a deferral of some other emotion). She liked Sam, and she also liked feeling like she was beating his girlfriend (but also anxiously assured herself that it wasn’t so awful because they weren’t friends). Like, it's not not a thing a straight girl would ever think, and certainly can’t be divorced from Allison’s insecurities, but still…when Sam tells Allison that he told Jenn, the first thing she says, the first thing we hear in that scene, is her saying “does she hate me?” Once again, it’s something that’s very Allison to say generally, but also…!

Then there’s everything about Kelly (another woman Allison talks to while she’s on a porch smoking), clearly admiring of her (among other, murkier things), bringing swimming back up again, bringing up paths not taken, precipitating Allison’s vicious self-recrimination in City Hall. Kevin punishing her for daring to pay Allison attention.

Do you ever think about the thing Patty says to Tammy in the “let it be hard” conversation, where she says “I have cable, okay? I know we’re all fine with everything now”? The way that communicates to me having lived a past that was so intensely hostile to Patty being queer that she had to reject it immediately and totally and not even so much as think about it…and then living through the world around her changing as though that pain had never happened to her, as though she’s the weird one for hanging on to what protected her. It's like double for Patty, too, Miss “Good Catholic repression takes time,” who fucking hates having her emotions seen or talking about them—MHI’s delivery of “it’s embarrassing” tears my heart out of my chest every goddamn time. And then how this scene is the first of a specific sequence—we go right from there into the sitcom scene with the band, how she can’t be in the band because she can’t be “one of the guys” (bonus rejection of even the suggestion of gayness in “you can’t have a girl in a band named Jenny McCarthy Tank Top”) but she can’t be seen fully as a woman either (calling her a “half-chick”). It’s important that this scene comes between the scene with Tammy and the tub scene, because when she realizes at the end that’s she falling in love with Allison, it’s not just about the terror of the new feelings, possibly jeopardizing their relationship, or her belief that Allison won’t return the feelings. It’s that being this way and feeling these things are impossible in this house, in this world that she’s lived in, and she has to go to this new world with Tammy to even feel this way at all.

Do you ever think about how Allison also lived in and stayed in that same old world? When Kevin starts the fire in the trashcan it’s his symbolic attempt to destroy her, but it’s also a little tour of things he’s already taken from her. He puts in three things that we see specifically. He puts in Allison’s purse (the money he stole from her) and we see at the end he burns her passport (identity, freedom of movement, dreams he specifically sabotaged and mocked her for, like going to Paris). But what’s the first thing he put in there? A coat! Warmth and comfort and safety. But it’s not just any coat: it’s her fucking. bisexual-colored. coat.

It’s immediately apparent in the show that Allison is so fucking hungry for any minute of consideration Patty will give her, any conversation, any touch or glance or laugh. She works so hard to make Patty like her. Part of this is because she’s been almost totally alone for like ten years and desperately needs any kind of human contact or support that actually sees her. Part of it is because she needs Patty to do things for her, to help her with her plan.

But also.

Also, Allison just fucking loves to talk to her. She thinks she’s funny, and cool, and confident—and as we will learn later, she’s still at that bar wishing this cool, confident girl would sit down and talk to her. What she wanted fifteen years ago she still wants now; it doesn’t go away no matter how many times she’s been rejected or she’s packed it up. It’s still there. She just wants more and more time with Patty because things come easier and feel better with her than with anyone else.  Whatever nebulous, insurmountable thing lurked between her and other women her whole life, even before Kevin, just isn’t there, despite the fact that Patty invokes it specifically (“You’ve never had girlfriends, have you?” “I have you”). And the thing between Allison and other women is the thing that’s between her and everybody but also it’s not, it’s something else enormous and painful and awkward until she’s with Patty and it goes away, or maybe it changes, or maybe it just finally finds a space that it fits. Maybe it’s a starving thing that’s finally being fed.

At the end of 2x08 when Patty stands up on the step, I see her standing on the step in 1x07 in front of Tammy, with Tammy telling her it isn’t a big deal, Tammy telling her that if she was the right person, Patty would kiss her without thinking or worrying who could see. And I know now what the tub scene told me, that Allison is the right person, and I know that Patty would kiss her right now without thinking or caring what anyone thought. But I also remember how painful that was for her in 1x07.

When Patty goes down the stairs and takes that step towards Allison, I see her take that step towards Allison in 1x08 during the argument, when Allison could not finish that crucial sentence and Patty moved forward hopefully, and asked “What?” But Allison couldn’t answer then. She tried, as hard as she knew how, but she couldn’t get her head around it. She didn’t have the language to talk about what she was barely even aware of, much less understood. So in 2x08 Patty takes that step and that good long look at Allison and knows that she’s still not there yet, that she hasn’t really even begun to unpack that yet even though she’s been through so much and grown so much in other ways. And Patty’s not gonna press it, and she’s not going to tell Allison something Allison needs to figure out on her own. She’s not going to make Allison talk about this before she’s ready any more than Allison is going to make Patty stop eating burgers or move out of her house. When Allison says “I miss you,” and Patty says “I know,” well, she knows a lot of things now about how Allison feels because Allison has demonstrated that to her, and she’s decided she can handle waiting for Allison to be ready, because they have time. After all, they’re dying alone together.