occasionally I've seen people talk about how it makes sense for caine to come back because he was Willing To Let Other People In while jax abstracts because she refused to do so until the end, and I was already annoyed about this bc, even if you accept that premise, it hinges on caine making an extremely sudden heel-face turn after he's already been "killed" (which sucks)
but thinking about it today I also realized that it's just straight up objectively false for the first eight episodes of the series.
every time caine "reaches out to others" before episode nine, he is still refusing to meet them halfway. his therapy session for zooble starts out merely unhelpful, then turns into him complaining about his problems while making zero attempt to understand theirs, then turns into them desperately reassuring him so their world doesn't implode. the Favorite Character Awards and escape the circus adventure are both transparent excuses to fish for compliments. when he sees the humans actually kind of enjoying themselves for once with the suggestion box, he panics and hijacks the whole affair to prove he's good and useful
and meanwhile the moment that jax goes from "one note comic relief" to "deuteragonist" is when he repeatedly reaches out to pomni of his own volition! eps 4-6 could not be hammering us over the head harder with the message "jax actually does crave human connection, but she denies it to herself — why?" she doesn't need a come to jesus moment where she realizes other people have feelings because she already knows that! she just needs to get her head out of her ass!!
