Previously on Chasing Life, Brenna kissed Margo even though she clearly had ex-girlfriend baggage and (eventually) Margo kissed Brenna back, Brenna donated stem cells to a stranger, April started planning her wedding with Leo, and Natalie found their dad’s shady manuscript.
We open with April reading her father’s unfinished novel, vividly imagining the fictionalized version of her own family. Natalie can’t wait for April to finish the book and asks if she sees it yet, but it’s sort of like asking someone how they like the Divergent series before they read Allegiant. April thinks the fact that the main character has a secret family is where the similarities end, but Natalie thinks it all rings too true to not be shady and tells April not to talk to her until she finishes the whole thing and can properly rage with her.
Leo and April are wedding planning, fighting over whether they would write their own vows and which Savage Garden song they would walk down the aisle to, when Sara busts in and gives them a psychology questionnaire to do to get to know each other a little better before they are together FOR ALL ETERNITY.
Meanwhile, Margo and Brenna are doing the opposite of fighting; they’re being all cute and adorable on a sweet little coffee shop date.
(At which, Margo is drinking wine, while on a date with a 17-year-old, in a place she cannot drink. A little strange.)
Brenna is joking about public school and having to choose a new outfit EVERY DAY (which, real talk, was a harder transition in college for me than the move to NYC) and they hold hands and are adorable. And then, without warning, straight from Season 3 of The L Word: Alice Pieszecki.
Well at least, the psycho-ex status is Alice. Her name is Juliet now and she’s slinging a glass of wine despite Margo having mentioned that she’s an alcoholic.
Juliet demands to know how Brenna stays so fresh-faced and nubile and before she can make a sarcastic comment about bathing in the blood of virgins, Margo takes Juliet’s drunk ass home.
Brenna is left alone, bewildered, and probably missing Greer more than ever. She had less baggage, and she had a literal secret mental illness.
Back at Casa de Carver, April finishes the super cheesy manuscript, in which the daughter tells her dad she wants to be a CIA agent just like her dad, and her father thinks asshole thoughts and says asshole words about how she would never succeed at being him, so she should just try something easier. From the look on April’s face, this conversation hits too close to home.
The draft of this novel is signed by “EDS” so April finds his name in the acknowledgements of one of her father’s finished books, looks up his Website Page and finds out he’s having a writing seminar nearby this weekend.
Beth is telling Grandma Emma about her boy problems; Graham is coming to the wedding as Dom’s plus one, and Beth wants a steamy date to show her ex that she’s moved on.
Sara brings in her old wedding dress for April to try on, but it’s hella gaudy. April and Beth are polite about it, but Grandma Emma is not. Beth says she might be able to alter it, but her face looks worried that not even Tim Gunn could make it work.
April then tricks Leo into going to a hotel in Providence to do their questionnaire, when really she wants to go to Edwin Shaw’s writing seminar. (If I were Brenna, and I found out they were just zipping off to hotels all willy nilly when she’s stuck in a new school with no friends, I’d be PISSED. Just saying.)
Speaking of her new school, Brenna is walking around, looking at bit like she hates everyone -kind of more like Pilot Brenna than we’ve seen her in quite a while. A happy peppy girl flounces over to her and starts rambling about the school, vision boards, and the resident sick kid. He has to wear a face mask (like, all the time) and has cancer and one leg. The girl invites Brenna to sit with her and the rest of the Plastics, but Brenna declines, probably imagining the slew of insults Ford would have for this chick.
Brenna texts Margo, who makes a film joke, and makes Brenna smile for the first time since the Gretchen Weiners wannabe opened her mouth.
Leo and April take the questionnaire and bond, but it’s obvious that they’re both holding back a little, which isn’t the point of the exercise, I’m sure.
April says she’s going to the museum, but instead she dons her wig, calls herself Isobel, and goes to meet Edwin Shaw. He creeps on her a little and invites her to chat over drinks, and she ends up staying for his seminar about how being a writer is like slitting your wrists and bleeding your soul all over some paper.
Sara goes to a coffeeshop and runs into an old schoolmate, Billy. They catch up a little, starting with the surface stuff. He’s gay, his son is away at college, he goes by William now. She has one daughter getting married and one who just finished a short film. Then they both crack and tell the less shiny truth: He’s divorced, and she has one daughter with cancer and the other is forced to go to public school because they have money troubles, plus she found out her dead husband had a secret family. (She won that whose-life-is-more-complicated game.) They giggle and decide to be new old best friends.
April, a little down from her experience with Edwin, confesses to Leo about the manuscript and the seminar and her fears that her dad wasn’t the hero she remembers, but actually kind of a jerk who really didn’t believe that she was cut out to be a novelist. Leo tells her that her family stuff is his family stuff now, and promises they’ll get through it together.
At the Carver house, where Beth apparently lives now (I approve), Beth tells Sara that she’s giving up guys for a while. Instead of suggesting she date Brenna (I also approve), Sara suggests she come with her to her friend’s Gay Men’s Running Club meetup, and Beth does love her a good ABBA singalong, so she’s in.
After they leave, Margo and Brenna come home, giggling after a great night out together, enjoying the thrill of the possibility that Sara could come home at any moment.
But then a knock on the door sends Brenna into a tailspin and gone is the calm, cool and collected ladykiller, replaced by the panicked teenager breaking the rules. But it isn’t Sara at the door, it’s Juliet, and a giant dog.
In Providence, Edwin tells “Isobel” that Thomas Carver was an asshole. He was actually a little bit crazy, and in his last year went full on bananapants; drinks, drugs, demons, you name it. April can’t really handle this information, so she splits, running into Leo on the way. Leo decides to lift her spirits by crashing a wedding going on at the hotel, where they lie and dance their way into everyone’s hearts.
When it comes time for the father/daughter dance, April gets sad. She’s full of conflicted feelings: she’s shocked and sad that her dad isn’t who she remembered, but she also still loves her daddy, and misses the man she thought he was. Because no matter what she finds out now, what secrets he kept or even how he treated other people, her memories are real, and how he treated her is what’s important now that he’s gone. April is ready to move past all this and finally lay her father’s memory to rest.
Meanwhile, back in Boston, Beth and Sara are bonding with their gay men. William tells Sara that it’s important to have a life of her own now that her children don’t need her to hold their hands, and Beth is hitting it off with a handsome fella closer to her own age. Who turns out to be William’s son. His not gay son.
In the Carver house, Juliet is spewing her crazy all over the place. She scolds Margo for not caring about their shared dog, and when she finds out Brenna’s mother lives with her, scolds Margo for dating someone so much younger than her, even though Juliet is clearly a lot older than Margo.
Brenna realizes they still live together, and Margo explains that grown-up lesbians do this sometimes, because leases and dogs and shared book collections make things complicated, and besides, Margo says, Juliet is still her very best friend in the whole world with absolutely no complicated or messy feelings lingering and even though Juliet will always be a super important part of her life it’s not like it’s going to get in the way of her relationship with Brenna. But the magic is gone, and Brenna looks around from the 40-year-old raving alcoholic to the student advisor of her old film club to the giant supposedly-depressed St. Bernard named Gertrude and was like, “Look, I loved The L Word, but in the so-glad-this-isn’t-happening-to-me way, not the I-wish-my-life-was-like-this way, so if you could all just leave, that’d be swell.”
Brenna Carver, more mature at 17 than all of the adult humans in her life. Sorry Margo, you were great, but you were hiding a big old bucket of crazy behind that beautiful head of hair, and Brenna doesn’t need that kind of chaos in her life right now. Not so soon after having the magical wonders of Greer ripped out from under her. It was fun while it lasted.
At the hotel in Providence, April confesses to Edwin who she is, and he doesn’t take back anything he said, but he does add that Thomas Carver was a great writer, a skill he obviously passed down to his daughter. He wrote, “I look forward to reading more,” on her piece from the writing seminar, just like he did on her dad’s manuscript.
The next morning, Sara and William are being bffs, excited about their running club, and are ready to go, and tell Beth and Gabe to come on let’s go! But Beth and Gabe bond over their hatred of running culture, running in general, and also mornings.
Leo and April decide to retry the questionnaire, being honest this time. Also, April decides she’s going to write a book.
At school, Brenna decides to sit at the table with the kid with cancer, and based on her tendency to be a relationship magnet plus the fact that she donated her bone marrow (unknowingly) to him, I’m sure they’re bound to make out as soon as he can remove that mask of his.
Later, April tries on Grandma Emma’s dress, and it’s pretty darn close to perfect.
April asks Sara if she thinks her dad had more secrets and lies than the family-in-Florida thing, but Sara doesn’t know, and has come to terms with the fact that she probably never will. Sara wonders if she held on to the dress because she loved the memory of the wedding, the beginning, more than the actual marriage as a whole. Sara’s one piece of advice for April to make sure she doesn’t follow in her parents’ footsteps, is to value honesty above all.
What did you think of Truly Madly Deeply? (The episode, not the wildly popular 90s ballad.)
Here are some of our favorite #ChasingLesbians tweets from this week:
Let’s start connecting Brenna with Shane on the chart. #ChasingLesbians
– Lady Liberty (@CindyLMarshall) July 28, 2015
Emma’s dress is perfect because of course it is. #ChasingLesbians #ChasingLife
– Beth Eastwood (@BethEastwood) July 28, 2015
There was more lesbian drama in 5 minutes on #ChasingLife than in 6 seasons of #TheLWord #ChasingLesbians
– Dana Piccoli (@DanaPiccoli) July 28, 2015
Good for you Brenna, stay away from lesbian drama for as long as you can!!! #ChasingLesbians #ChasingLife
– Alyssa (@tvwithapb) July 28, 2015
Beth, gay icon. I say yes to that!! #ChasingLesbians #ChasingLife
– Audrey (@pamplemoussee76) July 28, 2015
Remember the Dana shrine/stalking in season 3? @Leisha_Hailey plays trainwreck ex well! #ChasingLife #ChasingLesbians
– Jaime Tracks (@jaimetracks) July 28, 2015
The 17 year old is the most mature in this situation… and pretty much every situations #ChasingLesbians #ChasingLife
– Karly (@karlyko) July 28, 2015
Rock on Brenna #ChasingLife #ChasingLesbians you need Grenna back cc .@GracieDzienny .@halesbells
– maraleia (@maraleia) July 28, 2015
YOU TELL THEM BRENNA!! (But can Gertrude stay?) #ChasingLife #ChasingLesbians
– TheOtherNic (@CloneNic) July 28, 2015
