Not providing answers to essential questions and obscuring truth with mystery can be disastrous, especially to a confused, vulnerable and hormonal teenage girl. I don’t think it could have been possible for Connie’s mother to mishandle this situation any worse. By not providing Connie with answers about her father, which left Connie to her own devices to fed her curiosity.
Unfortunately, that led her to seek paternal love from a married man.
Connie is a teenage girl with “daddy” issues. Her episode lays on her “daddy” issues rather thick to say the least. More importantly, Connie years to know why her parents split when she was so young.
With her father dead and her mother unwilling to answer her questions, the notion burrows deep inside Connie. Her curiosity leads her down a regretful path to find, or more accurately, experience the truth, the love that has forever been denied to her.
Connie and her best friend Richie are high school “outsiders”. They hang in the wings and observe everything that happens around them, especially Richie. Richie knows about Connie’s affection towards Hector.
Richie wants to protect Connie from the ensuing pain he foresees. Instead of heeding Richie’s warning, Connie wishes to go about seducing Hector without the weight of judging eyes upon her, regardless of the consequences.
(Spoiler) After calamity hits Connie (and several drinks), she runs into the arms of Richie, who rejects her aggressive advances.
(Spoiler) Later, Richie takes Connie to see her father’s former lover, a man named Malcolm. There, he provides Connie with the answers she has desperately needs and some much needed closure.
(Spoiler) In the end, Connie, with a wounded heart, decides to side with Rosie and testify against Harry (indirectly going against Hector). We’ll have to see how much damage the weight of her testimony can bring.
Like anyone with little information, Connie made poor decisions, but it’s easy to sympathize with her struggle. She’s relatable, but her unpopularity, though stated aloud, clashes with reality. Every guy she runs into wants to talk to her, this could be brushed off as teenage hormones, but it makes her “outsider” claims appear false. Plus, she’s rather snappy, which makes me wonder why these guys would want to talk to her given they had other options.
Lastly, this episode refused to let visuals speak for themselves, relying more on “telling” than showing, which took me a little out of the experience. Still, I’m hooked and want to see how the series concludes.
When has your child sought the answer to something you refused to tell them? Did it go poorly? Did they find the answer through undesirable means?