Swerfbegone

It might sound peculiar to consider pre-crash Shauna as being “in the closet” in the same sentence as Tai, but it’s not absurd; as we’ve been unpicking Shauna since the first episode, we’ve gained a sense of her teen self being deeply tucked away: when she talks with Tai, as an adult, about how their lives have turned out she explains what she had planned; take up the elite university offer that she’d received, and kept secret from everyone. Make art. Graduate and move to France. Have wild affairs. Things that her pre-crash self has kept a secret from everyone in her life, not even hinting at until her resentment at Jackie’s myopia erupts in the wilderness. She doesn’t even like football.

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It’s a repeated complaint in the series, most notably vented about her own daughter, but it’s striking to hear Shauna and Tai compare their lives: Tai has achieved all of her dreams, and Shauna has achieved… none of them.

Why didn’t Shauna end up at Brown? Why’s she a suburban housewife when, as Jeff points out, she’s the smartest person that he knows? For that matter, while Jeff adores, even worships he, the feeling clearly isn’t mutual. And she certainly doesn’t notice how much he cares about her.

Shauna believes in consequences.

And this life is her consequence: she came back, hooked up with her dead friend’s boyfriend, the one she once fucked behind her back. She didn’t got off to Br