ABC

A Million Little Things: “Non-essential”

By Rueben | March 13, 2021

After several months off for its winter hiatus, a new episode of the 3rd season of A Million Little Things aired this week on ABC.

Here is the synopsis for that episode (season 3, episode 5) entitled “Non-essential”:

As COVID-19 becomes more widespread across the U.S., Boston goes into lockdown putting Rome’s movie in jeopardy and forcing Maggie to return home from Oxford. Because the hospitals are overwhelmed with coronavirus patients, Eddie’s cortisone injection is cancelled, leading him to take desperate measures to cope with the severe pain.

Nice Girls Cay and Rueben share their thoughts on this episode [spoiler alert]:

Cay:

It’s kind of surreal to see the show deal with the beginnings of the pandemic, a year after it happened IRL. Especially as you can pretty much predict how things are going to happen, based on our experiences – Delilah and her father are going to be stuck in Europe for months, Maggie is going to be stuck in the US (although I have a friend who is an American citizen but lives in Europe and has been back and forth between there and the US multiple times in the past year).

That said, the episode didn’t fit together great in that regard – Eddie’s procedure gets cancelled because of the virus, yet the school play does not. Rome’s movie gets cancelled, yet the group doesn’t even consider that it might not be safe to gather in a large group. Clearly Boston was not in “lockdown” yet as when that happened, it was dramatic and affected everything (Boston was one of the earlier places with a severe outbreak due to a big conference with a lot of international attendees.) There’s also the issue that they are having a lovely outside dinner after dark in Massachusetts….in March.

Anyway, all that stuff aside…

The “it’s complicated” and/or “very awkward” award once again goes to Gary for his Darcy-Maggie debacle. His intentions are good, but yikes – all three of them under the same roof is a very bad idea, almost as bad as just Gary and Maggie under the same roof right now. Maggie’s pregnancy is going to be an interesting plotline. Obviously her flatmate is the father and things just got a lot more complicated as they are likely to be an ocean apart for potentially the next year. We’ll see if they do a “will she keep the baby” plot.

I’m feeling really bad for Eddie right now, but he really needs to be honest with Katherine so that she can help him/keep an eye on him. Keeping everything from her makes his behavior that much more addict-like.

Speaking of Katherine, the odds of her assistant forgetting to mail something that important seems really low and out of character. I guess it was mainly a way to work the other lawyer in and relate back to Jon’s death. There’s also a bit of irony because the viewer is wondering whether the restaurant will be able to survive the pandemic anyway, as so many have not (including my favorite family-owned place).

Rome and Regina seem to be being set up to have a really rough year, after already having a rough one. The restaurant will certainly struggle and Rome’s purpose for quite a while now is suddenly either completely gone or on long-term hiatus.

I’m interested to see how the show will further work the pandemic in, especially the social distancing part, as this show is all about this huge group of friends getting together constantly!

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Rueben: Wow, it was great to have the show back after their winter hiatus, but the episode was hit or miss for me. It was surreal, as you said Cay, to see them depict the start of the pandemic from the beginning especially given the fact we hit one year ago (this episode aired on the one-year “anniversary”). We all know where the storylines are going to go, like you also said Cay: Delilah and her dad will be stuck in France for way longer than the time it will take for him to recover from his accident; Rome’s movie won’t be done and he’ll be floundering; Regina’s restaurant is going to suffer greatly just like so many, many other restaurants; Maggie will probably be told not to travel because of her pregnancy, Jamie, the baby daddy, will be stuck in England and we’ll get the exact story you suggested Cay – will she or won’t she keep the baby. And, Sophie and Danny will have to start school from home, and I’m doubting Sophie will be able to have her guitar lessons any longer. So many things up in the air just like how our lives have been for a year.

You are totally right that the Maggie and Gary/Darcy moments were extremely AWKWARD! And, it’s just gonna get worse if she decides to keep the baby, let alone breaking the news to everyone; and the fact that Gary offered she could stay at his apartment since he and Darcy will be on permanent babysitting duties until Delilah can get back. ARGH, it’s going to be a rough time for all of them.

I was upset at Eddie for taking the Vicodin; I mean I get it why he would take it – not just “steal” it from Rome and Regina’s bathroom but also ingest a pill before Theo’s school play. This is going to really stress his relationship with Kathryn and Theo. This could toss their lives into even more upheaval than before; and the pandemic won’t help anything for them either.

I did enjoy Sophie’s and Danny’s reactions to Maggie being back and how Gary and Darcy handled her being there unexpectedly. That was pretty priceless!

I felt so bad for Rome: he was at the finish line, getting to the table read only to have it all go down in flames. It was nice that they arranged for the table read at Delilah’s house, though.

I agree that it is very out of character for Carter to not mail out that letter, and I also found it very out of character for that lawyer to give them slack on the letter, but I guess the fact he was Jon’s last call gave him pause for helping Regina’s landlord to potentially kick them out. With the pandemic they may get evicted anyway because I have a feeling that landlord won’t care either way.

I’m a little unsure how I feel about where the show will go from here. Will they time jump since we are now a year into the pandemic or will they let the story play out as if the pandemic just started?