Army Wives – Beware surprise visits at the workplace

Oh what a tangled web we weave … it’s a cliche that gets overused, but I suppose there’s a reason for that — just consider how often it’s applicable. I mean, twice on one episode of Army Wives? Last night was fraught with secrets exploding in people’s faces.

I like how things played out between Michael and Claudia Joy. Their relationship is just so solid that while it seemed like a stretch for things to have gone so smoothly, with them it makes sense. In fact I think that what probably upset Michael the most was that Claudia Joy hadn’t told him about her health scare and/or the Grant thing before. It was the secret keeping that actually got to him. And on a side note, I have to think that Denise is the wrong person for Claudia Joy to go to for advice on something like this; she doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to a deployed husband and a potentially hurtful secret.

Time lines are always so rushed on this show, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Roland and Joan already preparing a video for pregnant mothers to evaluate. I was. But what I really liked was the way the foster parent idea developed. Still fast, but the personal component to the story made that more believable. That they seem ready to take on any of those foster kids is a really powerful message.

Pamela has nothing going on anymore, but I’d rather not see her at all then have her pulled into Roxy’s nonsense. I have no idea what’s going on with Trevor, but for her part Roxy is completely in the wrong for having kept her husband in the dark about Witt, as well as for trying to solve her own problems at the expense of others. I’m glad that Shady (Michael Flippo) didn’t stand for her garbage and put his foot down about her firing Witt, although where was he when Witt packed up and went home?

I’m not sure how I felt about Denise and Jeremy’s friends. It was really nice that she approached the lonely line of returning soldiers, and nicer still that she found two soldiers who knew her son. But there’s the potential that this could go down the surrogate child road, and I have two problems with that. The first is that she has a daughter to love and care for. The second: what happened to Tanya (Erin Krakow)? I thought for sure that the manner in which she was introduced and utilized would result in her becoming the surrogate child that Denise would need, later transitioning into a really nice relationship between “mother-in-law” and “daughter-in-law.” So what happened? Did Tanya not score well with audiences? Don’t forget that she too was a soldier returning from war.

There’s plenty going on without Tanya, but the question does arise if Jeremy’s friends end up having greater significance beyond this one episode. Meanwhile, while I know that grieving is a process, there seems to be no consistency to Denise’s story. One week she’s coping, the next it’s all she can do to hold it together. Did someone forget to write her a story, or did they decide not to bother? Or are they doing this to us on purpose?

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on May 09, 2011 @ 16:30 EST5EDT