User Reviews

Different sensations leave me this episode. The beginning and the development were perfect, emotional, great, but the ending was kind of disappointing. In the first scene at the hospital (great by the way), Kirsten visits Charlie as usual, saying "Hi you", and brings some flowers exchanging the dried ones. She notices he's reading without light and didn't finish lunch, so he uses her "maternal" worries to ask her to be in charge of Claudia and Owen if he dies (he wants that in his will). He knows it's a lot to ask to Paul, but she is the perfect "mother" for them, they love her and she loves them. When she asks about Bailey and Julia, he says they're too young and that they would be present for them, but ultimately she would be in charge, they would sleep in her house, and if Paul wanted he could be the other parent too. For obvious reasons, they agree she has to talk about it. I think he was right, in many ways, it was the right decision, for all the reasons he said. I know that Claudia wouldn't want to live in a house with Paul, but she'd be glad to be with Kirsten, who has to be involved in her life, without doubt. As for Owen, he'd have less problems to adapt, and Kirsten loves him since he was 6 months old. In the meantime, at the empty house, the school keeps calling for Claudia's disappearance but there's only one living being there: Thurber. Anyway, Julia and Bailey get the message when they arrive, instead of talk to her, they just yell at Claudia, and order her to pick up the books and go to school. Claudia, obviously upset for the lack of understanding, compassion, sarcastically says "great, so now everything is fixed", and leaves. In the day, Bailey miss the interview at the school (5 pm) because he and Sarah go to fix urgent problems in the laundry room at their building, and Julia misses it because she had to watch Owen at home. They later realize their confusion, while Claudia was waiting alone outside the office in school. When she arrives, Julia apologizes saying it was a mix up, and that they'll go next day in the morning. In the interview, Bailey and Julia lie about Charlie's fragile health state until they're forced to tell the truth. The principal seems to understand but wants them to deal with Claudia. Later, at dinner in their house, Paul tells Kirsten that he had a sad day at work dealing with the parents of a child who had an accident on his bike (which surely damaged the kid's head). He wanted to help the parents, so Kirsten brings Charlie's case if he dies, saying they could help him. But off screen, he says no because he doesn't want kids, he never did. The scene at the hospital room when Kirsten tells Charlie that she/they can't take them was really great, sad and touching, with a perfect soundtrack. He tells her he dreamed he was skiing with his bare feet, so she tells him what she dreamed: She was with Charlie in a lake, in a rickety boat, he swimming circles around her. But suddenly he started to go under and was yelling at her so she, from the boat, saved him from drowning with an inner tube. She was sad and in tears because she deeply wanted and wants to take care of Owen and Claudia, she loves them, she was and is somehow the closest to a mother they have. She knows Paul isn't selfish, he does a lot for kids as a neuropediatric surgeon, he loves his job, but she knows he never wanted kids of his own. She thinks that's part of the reason of why they ended up together. But her words, her tears, imply how much she wishes things could have been different. Charlie saddened says he knows she wanted, he feels the same way. This beautiful scene implies two big facts about Kirsten. First, her love for Charlie remains as stronger and deep as always. How sleeping next to someone else and being able to have such a dream with Charlie says it all. Second, the year in Chicago with her family and therapists changed her mind. They made her believe and accept her medical condition as the perfect reason to not have kids because it would be dangerous for her chronic illness. If she wanted to look for IVF or other way besides adoption, her medication, the bipolar II Disorder presents risks if she wanted to get pregnant. Adoption was out the table too. So can be said that in Chicago, they made her go against the deepest wishes of her heart, the two things she wanted more than anything in life: Charlie and having children. They convinced her to accept it, all because her chronic mental illness, for her sake. Fortunately, that's the reason of why the marriage with Paul won't last and why it was a mistake. They were always wrong in "forcing" Kirsten to forget her dreams. And that makes her story even saddest. Then, Social Services, Mr. Day takes the kids away from the empty house, learning that the two were alone in the night without any caring. Julia and Bailey were both working, but Mr. Day realized from Claudia that she couldn't reach Julia, and that Bailey didn't live there. So he places temporarily Owen and Claudia under Kirsten's custody because Claudia (off screen) told him who she is. Surely she said that the only adult in the world able to love them and take care of them besides Charlie, was her, their missing mother. Bailey and Julia arrived later to learn all this and attempted to take the kids, but Mr. Day told them they'll be investigated and that the kids will be in Kirsten and Paul's place. That was the right move too. In the time they were together today, once more Kirsten proved why she is the perfect woman to take care of them, helping Owen with daycare (he was with scissors and papers), and reaching, listening and comforting Claudia as no one else did in the last months. She needs them as much as they need her. No lecture was given, and Claudia explained for the first time to someone able to understand her what she does when she should be in school: she goes to see movies, to Golden Gate Park, pretending to be a tourist from Back East, with a happy family on vacation. So Kirsten comforted her, rubbing her back, her hair, telling her that nobody hates her. And only after this Claudia could visit Charlie in the hospital, apologize and explain to him that she couldn't be in school like nothing happened. This means that Kirsten, as her "adoptive mother", pushed away her fears to the point of allowing her to visit her "father", hospitalized in bed. Then, Claudia asks Julia to bring her clothes to spend the night at Kirsten's place, and saddened, says, she's alone, Bailey has Annie, Julia has Griffin, but she has no one. She has no boyfriend, no friend to talk to or to hold her, no one to confide her deep pain and suffering. And that's why she needs so much her adoptive mother, who would always demonstrate her love, hold and comfort her. Remembering their scenes together in seasons 1-2-3 for example, is easy to realize their deep bond. Remember how happy they were together in 2x08, spending that wonderful night before the disaster. Or Claudia's words in 2x09, that she wanted Kirsten to be always in the house, sleeping in the same bed with Charlie everyday, meaning who her parents were and somehow "are". Also, if Charlie and Kirsten were married since season 2 or 3 (how things should have been without the excessive drama of the series), all these problems with Social Services wouldn't exist and Kirsten would have been in the house all this time with Charlie, Claudia and Owen, being his beloved wife for him and the mother for the kids, exactly as she was in the not distant past. The future of the series proves that I'm right.

That's why the ending of the episode wasn't good for me. Totally bittersweet, after Charlie is released, the siblings arrive to the stairs of Kirsten's place to retrieve Owen and Claudia. He holds Owen asking if he had a good time and he says yes. Julia takes Claudia, Charlie thanks Kirsten, and they leave in the car while she returns upstairs. It didn't feel right, because for all the past, all what she did and how much she loves them, for how much Charlie, Claudia and Owen need her, it's like she should have been with them in the car, and not behind. Considering Julia-Griffin's future, and the intromission of Rosalie (that started in this episode with the kiss), what happened here has no sense at all. Julia saying that her marriage with Griffin is enough to provide caring and love for Claudia and Owen? That she wouldn't go to college? It was a big fat lie, wasn't the solution. Griffin did almost nothing this season to prove that, mainly working all day. The future proves that it meant nothing. Bailey and Julia were upset when Charlie told them that he asked Kirsten to be in charge of Owen and Claudia if he dies, but he had a very good point. The two middle siblings couldn't handle the situation without him for the two weeks he was hospitalized with pneumonia (not to mention 3x12 for example), they could never handle Owen and Claudia forever, exactly Charlie's words. That's why their interview with Mr Day went bad, he said that they didn't notice Claudia's absence from school and couldn't even take the time for Owen, who was mainly watched by Claudia or some random nanny so far. To convince Mr Day, Bailey should have said that if Charlie dies, he would move into the house to be the paternal figure, Julia would stay, and they would hire Kirsten as nanny to help them (after all, she wants to be involved and is unemployed). That was the right way to convince Social Services to not split the family. To finish, I'd like to highlight some details: Charlie's dream about skiing, and Bailey jokingly asking his skis on his will, means that Charlie went to ski at some point during the series, probably in spring-summer 1995, just as he planned with Kirsten in 1x20. Another detail, Mr Day called Kirsten Mr Bennett, which means she is not using Paul's surname on paper.

While Charlie is still in the hospital social services come by and take Claudia and Owen because nobody is around. Charlie also makes his will and tries to figure out who will take care of the two in case he dies.

Great story. We were already not expecting for social services to show up again and they did it at such a bad time. We can also feel for Claudia. It does indeed make sense that she is the one feeling alone in this horrible time while Julia and Bailey have support outside. But luckily it all worked out.

I don't really like that girl at the shop. Let's hope Griffin doesn't do anything stupid.