Eddie’s decline is troubling.
The Coronavirus pandemic is raging on during A Million Little Things Season 3 Episode 7, and we’re witnessing effects here and there without it getting too overwhelming.
However, the pandemic has nothing on Eddie’s addiction and the ripple effects that will tear through his family when the truth inevitably comes out.
Dakota’s willingness to enable Eddie by the end of A Million Little Things Season 3 Episode 6 had many viewers understandably outraged. She’s a recovering addict herself, who is newly clean, and she shouldn’t have allowed Eddie and her sympathies for him and self-interest to sway her actions.
Yet, Dakota doesn’t seem like a terrible person, and she was as sympathetic as ever when she had to deal with a high Eddie.
Katherine is protective of Eddie and her family. After her last experience with Dakota, she was reluctant to allow the woman anywhere near her family, but she settled on Dakota only staying in the garage.
It’s tough, but you can understand Katherine’s perspective. Anyone who has ever dealt with addicts could probably relate to her sentiments.
But Katherine hasn’t seen what Dakota witnessed in that garage. We’ve never known Eddie the Addict. We have only experienced Eddie as the recovering addict who never fell off the wagon.
Eddie could barely help Theo with his math homework. It was a disturbing sight. Had Dakota not stepped into the Saville home to help Theo out, then God only knows what would’ve happened or if Theo picked up on something.
No, I’ve been raising a small psychopath.
Gary; Does Liam like ice cream sandwiches?
Darcy
Hats off to David Giuntoli for his performance during this arc. He sells Eddie’s struggles so well it’s disheartening to watch. He makes you want to turn away. He gets you all squirmy with this sense of foreboding and doom.
After the close call where Katherine almost found the switched-out Oxy/Aspirin and the incident with Theo, Eddie claims that he’s trying to get back on track.
He didn’t want to admit it to Dakota, but the situation with Theo frightened him, and with that jolt, he took the steps toward attending a meeting.
As someone who has been advocating for Eddie to hit up an AA/NA meeting, I appreciate that he took the initiative and sat through a zoom one. They don’t work for everyone, and that’s fine, but up until this point, we had no idea what Eddie’s addiction looked like or how he stays sober.
Katherine: Eddie, you OK?
Eddie: Today was a really bad day.
Katherine: And you were doing so well.
Eddie: Yeah, about that. Katie, I messed up, and don’t know how to tell you.
As painful and brutal as this storyline is, it’s also a compelling one to explore.
For all of her faults, Dakota didn’t hesitate to fall on her sword and take the blame for Eddie. She knew Katherine didn’t think highly of her anyway, and if the truth came out, it would destroy Eddie and disrupt his family.
It’s hard to say if that was the best or worst call. It’s delaying the inevitable, and maybe if Katherine found out sooner, then Eddie could get real help and have a support system.
Addiction is more than the substance; it’s the lying and deceit that partially make it so destructive.
What is this? Why are there aspirin in your oxycodone, Eddie? Tell me what’s going on right now!
Katherine
Eddie can say he wants to get back on track all he wants. He can believe it too, but as long as he keeps looking Katherine in the eyes and lying to her, it’s all null.
Katherine has to know deep down that he’s lying to her. Despite her feelings about Dakota, she addressed Eddie first. It’s reasonable that with the pain he’s been in, the stress of a pandemic, all of it, that he would relapse.
She flashed back to when he gave her the aspirin, distracting her from rummaging around on the top shelf. Her instincts were spot on, but it’s easier and less scary if she can believe that it was Dakota.
She’s already confiding in Alan and implying that things are difficult for them with everything going on.
Katherine’s budding friendship with Alan seems to be a bit of an escape for her. So far, it appears on the up and up. However, I wouldn’t put it past this series to toy with the notion of an emotional affair or dance on the lines of a gray area.
Eddie’s relapse will take a toll on the family; it already has. All of Eddie’s lying is bound to test his and Katherine’s marriage. And then, of course, Alan has a connection to Jon, and he and Katherine are similar and have the same job.
I don’t know if the series will go there, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if they did. That possibility aside, I like Alan. He seems like a decent man, and there’s a genuine friendship developing there.
He doesn’t come across as if he has ulterior motives, and their negotiation over hand sanitizer and eggs was cute. Oh, there was so much bartering in those early days when there were depleted resources. Hand sanitizer was like liquid gold!
While we’re on the topic of product, bloody hell, was that the most aggressive Target product placement ever?
Fear because of the pandemic was a creative spin on the classic kid disliking his mother’s boyfriend. It worked better than the random shift from Gary’s Maggie hang-up to his fear that he wouldn’t impress Liam from his previous experiences growing up.
It’s not to say that Gary’s fear that he would relegate Liam to the third wheel and impose on Darcy and Liam’s bond was insincere. No doubt, it’s reasonably a factor at play with all of this.
However, it felt as if we were supposed to ignore the direction they were leading us down that Gary is still hung up on Maggie and prioritizes her.
It’s one thing to play around with my emotions. It’s another to do it with Liam. I will not let you do that to my son.
Darcy
It felt as if Gary deflected from him not telling Darcy about Jamie showing up or that he didn’t stay with Maggie after all but still turned back around.
It deflected from Gary only driving up to the cabin later because of Jamie showing up.
Nevertheless, Gary poured his heart into impressing Liam, and nothing seemed to be working. But then he realized that Liam’s anxiety was at an all-time high because of the pandemic.
He has some OCD; the prospect of spending time in a strange house with people he barely knew, unsure how safe, clean, and sanitized everyone and everything, caused him distress.
Ironically, it’s something that bonded the two. One of the best things about a series like this is that there is always something new to learn about characters we’ve grown to love.
Gary has a touch of OCD himself, and I imagine his time battling cancer could instigate or exacerbate something like that.
It felt like something he could share with Darcy before she confided in him about what happened to her in Iraq. It doesn’t make Maggie’s observation about her relationship with Gary less truthful.
It also doesn’t stop one from concluding that Gary likes troubled women with complicated pasts, whom he gets to be the white knight for in their relationships.
Maggie shared with Jamie that it felt as if she and Gary got stuck in roles where he was the caretaker, and it almost feels as if Gary is doing some of the same things with Darcy.
He’s latched onto her PTSD as he did Maggie’s cancer. That aside, after hearing Darcy share her experience, then it’s a wonder she can function at all, let alone get some sleep.
She killed a kid; that’s a hell of a demon to weigh down on a person’s conscience. However, it’s more apparent than ever that she needs therapy.
That ring isn’t for Darcy. It was for me.
Maggie
Gary and Darcy’s mutual confessions were a tool to bring them closer together, and as a fan of their relationship, there aren’t complaints about that. But the execution of it during this installment needed work.
Maggie and Jamie are going strong as well. They’re in dire need of a conversation, preferably one that Maggie doesn’t broadcast to the masses, about their relationship.
They keep dancing around their feelings for one another. Neither of them knows where they stand with one another, so they’re in this awkward place of former friends with benefits and roommates, but also current confidants and supporters of one another.
Jamie is a total Maggie cheerleader, and it’s good that she has a friend of her own outside of the group that she cultivated herself.
She’s comfortable with Jamie, but what are they is the million-dollar question here. Unsure of what his place is in her life in America, Jamie was ready to return to England, but Maggie wanted him to stay (for her screening). They like being around one another.
Aside from the fact that Jamie rummaging through someone’s home and being nosey was annoying as hell, the conversation they had about Gary was interesting.
But do people put that much meaning behind a man keeping an engagement ring? While there is probably some merit to Gary harboring feelings for Maggie, jewelry isn’t an indictment.
Who else thinks that the podcast is going to come back to bite Gary in the butt somehow? He never responded to Maggie’s awkward messages informing of what happened.
Maggie deleted it, but it’s already out there, and as we know, nothing truly disappears once it’s on the internet.
How will that intimate conversation between Maggie and Jamie affect Gary or Darcy?
I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I’m in love with your son.
Gary
Gina’s restaurant dilemma with her staff was a cute enough filler. Thanks to Shanice, Someday will get flooded with customers, and it’ll keep the restaurant afloat and everyone staffed.
Gina providing food for kids who are no longer in school and probably missing out on some steady meals is something she and Rome would do. They’re both generous and loving people. Any pay-it-forward setup is enough to make me smile.
Rome is becoming attached to Tyrell, and something tells me that the teen is homeless. The storyline would be predictable. Rome and Gina always deal with kids in some capacity, so that part is too, but I’m rolling with it.
If they want to give us something that I didn’t realize I needed, they could explore Regina’s decades-long friendship with Albert.
Albert is so lovable and pure! He’s a burly ball of sunshine and positive energy. Gina practically cried over the prospect of letting someone she knew half of her life go, and he’s the heart and soul of the staff.
Can we please get more Albert?!
Over to you, AMLT Fanatics. Is this storyline with Eddie’s relapse tearing you up inside? Are you shocked by Darcy’s revelation?
Hit the SHOW COMMENTS below and discuss!
You can watch A Million Little Things online here via TV Fanatic.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.