Delilah moves out of her Boston-area house in this week’s A Million Little Things — think her movers charge extra for all the emotional baggage that pops up?
I’m referring, of course, to the number of times her dead husband Jon (played by original cast member Ron Livingston) appears in flashbacks to their shared life in the home. There are a lot of them.
The episode kicks off as Jon and Delilah walk through their house before they’ve moved in. “We are going to make so many happy memories here,” he tells her. Aw, they’re so cute and completely unaware of the carnage the next few decades will bring. Then we snap to the present: Delilah is in her house, surrounded by boxes, and Eddie lets her know that the movers are there.
Throughout the episode, Delilah flashes back to moments in her life with Jon. We see the day he gets the Bruins season tickets, when she brings up that they’d talked about possibly moving to France once the kids were school-aged. And since Sophie is in kindergarten… She points out that she doesn’t really have any friends in Boston, and Jon has a quick solution: He’s going to invite the guys he met in the elevator (aka Eddie, Rome and Gary) over for dinner, and boom, she’ll have pals. Um, OK?
In another flashback from around the time Sophie is thinking about college, a clearly stressed and distracted Jon once more shuts down Delilah when she raises the idea of potentially moving to France. He instead suggests that they move her father to the states, then rushes off… just as Eddie texts Delilah about how he enjoyed their recent hangout and how they should do it again.
She’s shaken out of her sad reverie by the arrival of all of the Friends of Jon, who are there for one last pizza night in the now-empty house. And speaking of the Friends of Jon:
* Greta and Katherine are planning their wedding when Katherine’s mom suggests that Greta, not Katherine, take her to the grocery store. Her reasoning later becomes clear: She gives Greta a check for $5,000 to put toward the wedding. When Katherine finds out, she tries to give it back, but Katherine’s mom says that Greta has made Katherine “the happiest I have ever seen,” and therefore she wants to give them the gift. The brides-to-be tearfully accept.
* Sophie and Tyrell are still sleeping together, and having a good time, but he wonders exactly what they are to each other. She suggests that they keep it “low-key” until he gets back from spending the summer in Haiti with his mom. He later invites her to come with him, but she says no. Eddie figures out what’s up and asks her why she’s keeping things quiet, and she says she’s worried about losing Regina if things go south with Tyrell. Eddie points out hat his affair with Delilah metaphorically blew up their entire friend group, yet the gang survived; that perspective heartens her. She also notes that she now understands that you can’t always choose with whom you fall in love. (I’d argue that you absolutely can choose not to engage in that love while still married to the mother of your child, but potato, potahto.) Anyway, Tyrell and Sophie get on the same page and tell Rome and Regina that they’re dating, then announce their plans to spend the summer together in Haiti. Most importantly for Sophie: Regina is more than on board with the new development.
* When Sophie and Danny’s invitations to Katherine and Greta’s wedding arrive, Delilah starts to think that hers won’t. After all, as she points out to Eddie, she was intimately involved in the dissolution of Eddie and Katherine’s marriage. But when Katherine finds the invite in Theo’s bag, she confronts him and he confesses that he doesn’t want Delilah at the event, given how much she hurt Katherine. Later, at pizza night, Theo confesses/apologizes to Delilah, who graciously accepts his explanation. She adds that she loves Katherine, and “if me being at the wedding makes her day better then that’s what I want. And if me not being there makes her day better, then that’s what I want, too.” Theo says Katherine definitely wants her there, and that’s that.
* Gary and Maggie take Javier on his first official outing: to their cancer-support group. They happen to arrive right as a tearful member is talking about how chemotherapy has interfered with her plans to have a baby. Later, though, the woman — who was diagnosed about a year before — tells Maggie that seeing Javier reminded her that there’s hope for her dream of having a faimly. Then Gary and Maggie reminisce about the bathroom quickie that kicked off their relationship… and later have another upstairs at Delilah’s near-empty place.
* At the end of pizza night, Rome marshals all of his friends to convince Regina that she should run for city council — and she says she will, with Rome as her campaign manager. Finally, only Eddie and Delilah are left in the house. She tells him that she was always so sure that she wanted to go back to France, but she’s lonely there. “I know that I’m ready to let go of this house, but I don’t know that I’m ready to let go of everything else,” she says. But before they can really talk about whether she’d stay, they’re interrupted by Sophie and Danny. And after a few more memories of being in the house with Jon, she turns off the light and leaves for the last time.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Sound off in the comments!
