> You can't have it both ways. "If we didn't see it, it didn't happen"
> has to mean that we can't know EITHER way. So you can't 'know' that
> Abby wasn't available/sup****tive any more than I can 'know' that she
> was.
>
All depends on whether you're wearing your Abby colored gl***** or not.
I've seen enough of Abby on the show over the years to know that the world
revolves around her and her ability to be available and sup****tive of
others
is very limited. Witness Luka and his dying father. Recall she was also
drinking during this time period with Carter, so the 'Abby was drinking,
so
of course she couldn't care at all about Luka' excuse could be used here,
too. Or the fact that Abby really doesn't have the ability to empathize.
And I most certainly can 'know' that Abby spent a goodly ****tion of the 3
days before the funeral tending to her brother because we were told he had
returned with her and been admitted to a mental health facility. Unless
we're supposed to think that magical elves and fairies handled it for her.
Or Abby did all these things while simultaneously offering Carter
'sup****t'
via her cell phone, there aren't that many hours in the day. We've also
seen Abby's single minded obsession with her family in these instances and
that she is incapable of focusing on anything else when she's in martyr
mode.
> I didn't remember the exact timeframe. Once I rewatched, they said
> 3-4 days. (Jack told the lawyer he'd flown in '3 days ago.')
So, in fact, my memory for an eppy from 5 years ago was correct.
>
>
> .
>>
>> > So, I rewatched "Things Change" last night. And, not surprsingly,
your
>> > memories of it/take on it bear precious little resemblence to what
>> > happened on screen.
>>
I'd say both of our POV are colored by our feelings for Abby.
>> Lordy, you are a glutton for punishment! I haven't seen it since it
>> aired,
>> don't have it on tape.
>
>
> I would say then that you have an amazing memory for an episode you
> saw once ... almost 5 years ago. Except of course that your memories
> are not that accurate.
Actually, they weren't any less accurate than yours. At least until you
rewatched the eppy scene by scene a couple days ago ;)
>
>> OK, so my first point, that Abby and Carter were looking for one
another,
>> and didn't bump into each other randomly was correct. I was also
correct
>> in
>> my recollection that there was some initial confusion as to what the
>> other
>> was referring to initially. I didn't see Abby's look as so much
shocked
>> and distressed on Carter's behalf as she was that Gamma had kicked it
at
>> a
>> rather inconvenient time for her.
>
> So you can read her mind? "Distressed look" on her face was pretty
> obvious. Exactly what she was distressed about would indeed have to
> left to the viewer, since there is no dialogue, beyond Abby's "I'm so
> sorry. Nobody told me." (Which, upon a second 're-view' was said IN
> the trauma room, immediately after hearing the news. Not out in the
> hall.)
OK, so when I presume that Abby's 'distressed' look was because Gamma's
death was messing up her plans, I am reading Abby's mind, but when you
presume it is because she is feeling sad for Carter's loss is
because you know what she's thinking? I would also disagree that her look
of distress was 'obvious'. Different viewers interpret the same scenes
differently, just as in real life. What looked like 'distress' to you
appeared to be the same sullen, constipated expression MT wears in most of
her scenes as Abby. Abby has a similar expression when she has a hangnail
or when her coffee is cold. MT's range as an actress is pretty limited,
IMO. 'She runs the gamut from A to B' as Dorothy Parker once said of a
far
better actress.
so darned sure she was coming back
>> immediately, why did she go home and pack a bag?
>
>
> Oh.... maybe she figured that, since Eric was stranded somewhere in
> Iowa, that he was probably homeless. And she'd had enough experience
> with homeless, mentally ill people (through her job) to suspect that
> he probably hadn't bathed/changed his clothes in a while. So, to spare
> the other people who would be stuck on a plane with him for a while,
> she took a moment to toss a clean change of clothes into her bag? (We
> saw no evidence that she had packed any clothes for herself.)
As I recall, she had a toothbrush for Eric, amongst other things (or at
least he asked). In any event, whether she packed or not, her promise to
Carter that she'd be back that night was clearly untrue as she was already
hunkered down in a motel for the night.
r incorrectly. Her hand was NEVER
> 'outstretched.' (Unless you are referring to the moments when she is
> removing her gloves and throwing them in the trash.) She rubs his
> upper arm/shoulder/back the whole time he is talking about Gamma. Then
> her hands are either at her sides, in her pockets, or out of shot.
> (Due to the wide screen format they are sometimes cut off, but unless
> she has rubber hoses for forearms, they could not possibly be
> 'outstretched'.) She doesn't reach for the prescription until AFTER
> Carter writes it, tears it off the pad, and hands it to her.
>
She was holding her other hand palm up, waiting for the rx which was
apparently cut off in the wide screen. I don't have the tape, but I found
discussion of the eppy elsewhere and I wasn't the only one to notice it or
to notice that she was obviously distracted and seemed in a hurry to get
it
and be on her way.
's flying in ... You
>> > haven't seen your brother in months, why do you have to go now?" Abby
>> > explains that he's off his meds, she can't reach Maggie, and if she
>> > doesn't go now, he may disappear again.
>>
>> Which, of course, since it was literally hours from the time she had
last
>> spoken to him until she could get there, in real life, he'd most likely
>> have
>> been long gone anyway. I speak from personal experience. Abby's 'plan'
>> made
>> no sense as usual, she was taking a late flight to Iowa (it was already
>> dark
>> when she left),
>
> Again, incorrect. It was dark when she arrived at the diner.
We never
> saw her leave, so we don't know exactly what time it was, but since
> Carter had been talking to Jack on the phone about 'are you sure you
> can make the 5:30 flight .... and Jack is in Boston, so it's well
> before 4:30 in Chicago at that point ... it's probable that Abby left
> in the late afternoon and planned to get the last flight back to
> Chicago.
Once again, all presumably and probably. You're right, we don't know what
time she left, it might've been night, it might've been late afternoon.
Your speculation is just that. Doesn't matter since it doesn't change the
fact that she didn't come back that night as promised and that anyone with
any common sense would never have made such a promise to their distraught
boyfriend. We also know, that, even if she left the ER while it was still
daylight, she didn't go directly to the air****t, she went to her place, or
Carter's, and packed a bag for her brother and got the prescriptions
filled.
If it was already mid to late afternoon in Chicago, which Carter's concern
that his father would miss his flight indicates, Abby would've had to move
faster than greased lightning to get to a drugstore, go home, pack a bag
and
catch a flight before evening. BTW, this eppy takes place in mid May,
during daylight savings time, which means it wouldn't have gotten dark in
Iowa much before 9 PM. My point being that the timeframe Abby gave
Carter;
that she would leave the ER, go home and pack, get to the air****t, fly to
Iowa, get to wherever Eric was, get back to the air****t and get home that
evening was completely ridiculous which is why Carter reacted as he did to
her assertion that she'd be home that night.
(And the issues with the plan have much less to do with Abby,
> or this particular scenario, than with the way things work in the
> ERverse. In that reality, not only are beds always available in
> treatment programs at a moment's notice, but post 9/11 rules for air
> travelers do not apply. (No mandatory 2 hour check-in.) And flights
> come and go from Chicago at hours much later than IRL. (A few
> episodes later, Carter catches a 'midnight' flight to Paris, (not even
> leaving County until after 9 p.m.) and still later, Gillian leaves
> Luka's at 10 p.m. to catch a plane to Montreal.)
Never been to Europe, huh? Many flights to Europe leave later in the
evening so they can land in the morning. In any event, apparently there
wasn't a late night flight back from Iowa or Abby would've been on it,
isn't
that the point?
>
> assuming that her mentally ill brother had stayed at a diner
>> for hours and hours (and that the management let him) waiting for her
to
>> show up
>
>
> And the dialogue did indeed sup****t this. Eric says, "I wasn't sure
> you would come." and Abby says "I wasn't sure you would still be
> here." (It's also very possible [though again, we didn't see it, so it
> didn't happen...] that Abby had called Eric back to finish their phone
> conversation that was interrupted when James grabbed her, to assure
> him that she would make every effort to get there. And even if she
> didn't call back, the dialogue does indicate that Eric had asked her
> to come for him.
Or at least to help him somehow, whether the only answer was for Abby to
fly
to Iowa herself immediately and fetch him is debatable. But typical Abby,
"I am the ONLY one who can help him, I am the ONLY one who cares. Poor
widdle me!" She can be reliably counted upon to choose the option most
likely to result in drama and to call attention to herself and her
martyrdom.
>
> No evidence that it was 'the middle of the night.' More like late
> evening. Neither Eric nor Abby looks particularly exhausted, and when
> Abby calls Carter to tell him they missed the flight, she says she'll
> call him again 'later.' (Not 'in the morning' or 'tomorrow', but
> 'later.' Surely she doesn't plan to call him back at 2 or 3 a.m.)
> (And while we don't see it on the screen, the script side mentions
> 'take out containers on the bedside table.' Chinese restauratns
> usually aren't open in the middle of the night.)
>
Naomi, you cannot have it both ways. A couple of paragraphs ago, you were
promoting middle of the night Iowa-Chicago flights, now it's still early
enought that Abby could call Carter again before bedtime but was still too
late to get a flight to Chicago. I can get flights to Chicago from
Cleveland up until around 11 PM, I presume Iowa, being about the same
distance, would be the same. So, if Abby hadn't been able to catch a
plane,
it must've been rather late in the evening. Not that it matters since the
basic point is that Little Miss Wonderful hadn't been able to accomplish
her
mission and return home the same night because she ain't a miracle worker.
Maybe she should've gotten some tips from Santa. He gets a lot done in a
single night.
BTW, there's a Chinese restaurant not 5 minutes from my house that is open
until 2 AM. I'd also point out that the food containers simply tell us
that
they ate sometime prior to the phone call, they could've been sitting
there
on the night stand for hours. You don't know what time it was when she
called nor do you know that her promise to call Carter 'later' meant that
evening. The other thing you don't know is whether Dear Sainted Abby
actually called again as promised. She'd already broken her promise to
get
back that night, why would Carter or anyone else expect her to keep her
word
and call back 'later'?
>
>>
>> There is also the FACT that Abby had flatly refused to look for Eric at
>> all
>> until that moment, completely shooting down Maggie's plan to hire a
>> detective. I can see how Carter would wonder what the he** the
emergency
>> was when she couldn't be bothered to even attempt to look for him until
>> that
>> very moment.
>
> NOW she knows where he is. It's not a question of searching for a
> person who could be ANYWHERE in the world. She has a phone number and
> an address, and he had asked her to come. THAT"S the emergency.
>
>
Abby knew where he ditched the plane, where he had last been seen, which
was
only a few days after he disappeared. And, yet, she told her mother not
to
hire a private detective to look for Eric. The guy had walked away from
his
plane in the middle of nowhere, didn't have an endless supply of cash to
sup****t himself, he was also mentally ill. He couldn't have gotten far on
foot in those cir***stances, he was not ANYWHERE in the world, and she
knew
it. Yet, she didn't even want to try to look. Instead, she let the trail
get cold and wait for a mentally ill man to make the first move apparently
to feed her ego.
I fail to see what was different except that Eric called HER so she could
play the martyr. And that was the emergency, Abby needed to go
gallivanting
off herself to get him, a private detective wouldn't have made her the
hero
of the story as she needs to be.
snip
e was already late. There is no indication that the hospital was
> en-route to the cemetery. She made what seemed to her to be the best
> choice at that moment. Both IRL and on dramatic TV, people sometimes
> make choices that seem 'best' at the time, but go horribly wrong.
And, on TV, we can always count on Abby to make the worst possible
decisions
in all cases. She's one of those people for whom things never seem to work
out and who cannot see that the reason disaster always befalls her is
because she makes choices that make it inevitable. She brings her misery
on
herself because she enjoys being miserable and wants the attention it
brings.
> If she expected him to go ,why did she ask him to write the scrip in
> advance?
Because she needed to get it filled in Chicago before she left. How was
she
going to find an open drugstore in Iowa in the evening? A lot of
pharmacies
won't accept prescriptions written out of state. Even if Carter was going
with her, they needed to get the meds in Chicago. Don't you remember
Sailing Away? I know you read scripts and you know there was a scene that
was cut where Carter couldn't get meds for Maggie in Oklahoma.
(THe only possible expectation might have been that when
> Carter asks if she can leave right away, and she says "I'm ready now",
> maybe she assumed that his readiness to leave himself meant that he
> planned to go with her. Once she realized that they were dealing with
> two totally different crises, it was VERY clear that she planned to go
> alone, and come home as soon as possible.)
>
It was VERY clear to Abby's fans, not to the rest of us. Sort of like how
Abby's fans know for certain that her 'distress' was over Carter's loss
and
not her own issues.
atment center, the morning of the funeral. Where we see that
> the director is already ready to throw Eric out for not following the
> rules. So... given that it's been only 3 days, it's pretty obvious
> that they were able to find a treatment center and get Eric admitted
> VERY quickly, leaving Abby ample time to help/sup****t Carter. Even
> without that scene, the 3 day time frame [and Eric's statement that
> he'd been cheeking his meds because he didn't feel well on the full
> dose] means that they would have found him something very, very
> quickly. Or else it's the typical ERverse issue of two separate
> timelines for two separate stories.)
>
>
> Naomi
I realize you've never gotten anyone admitted to a psych hospital, so I
understand how you could think it was 'very, very quickly', but, I can
assure you, it took a minimum of the better part of a day, especially if
it
was a private facility, as it seemed to be. Also, how did Abby find this
place? Had she done research in advance (possible, except that we're
talking about Abby who is a dimwit)? Wouldn't she have needed to spend
some
time on the phone or in person looking for a place before she even got to
the point where he could be admitted?
Sharon
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