A Robotic Work in Progress

David is characterized as being such a caring, level presence in his family—Shane and Yuna charging ahead with a goal-oriented conversation that'd maybe a bit snarky or ego bruising, and David chiming in to diffuse things or focus back on matters at hand. I love that. He's the family's ballast, but he can also default to a bystander role while someone else sets the tone. Another strength that depending on the circumstances can become a flaw. Awesome.

I know a lot of people have really warm feelings about the Hollander parents developing a familial relationship with Ilya when his own relatives have been so awful to him—I love it too! It's a really beautiful way to show that Ilya isn't just choosing Shane as a love object, he's choosing him for a whole rich shared life. That's an especially potent idea when the necessary secrecy around their time together makes so many other aspects of a shared life impracticable. I think it could be huge for Ilya as a person as well—the perspective of here is a father who loves his son more than his son's accolades, who I have never once heard raise his voice. And he loves me now too. And having an older woman behave maternally towards him in a way he lost from Irina and seems to have never gotten from Polina... honestly, Yuna as the good counterpart to Polina makes a lot of sense to me, though I know the usual parallel is with Irina. Someone who is positioned as family to Ilya not by being blood related but through their mutual ties to a third person—Ilya's father for Polina, Shane for Yuna. Someone who puts the effort in and really cares this time. I think Yuna's biases and incisive views on hockey probably delight Ilya and having a Mom Figure who is biased in his favour would be really special to him. It's enough that she tries and she cares and she wants welcome Shane's partner into the family. She doesn't need turn into a therapist for him. She isn't that for anyone else in her life, and she doesn't need to be in order to be loving.

Veering into a little more personal speculation bc the show didn't give us much of an 'after' for this to play out in—I don't think that Ilya sees the Hollanders as a flawless, but I do think he spends a lot of the early years of his and Shane's career/rivalry envious of how 'perfect' everything is for Shane. He's well-spoken in English and French, he's treated as smart and reliable, and his parents show up to support him at all these events, and he likes that they're there. But Shane isn't perfect. His family isn't perfect. Ilya has a front row seat for both. Crucially, and the part that he might read as perfect—they do love each other. Shane talks about his parents casually, easily, and with a lot of liking, and that's a point of friction until they can reach an understanding of how different Ilya's family dynamic back in Russia is. Ilya sees at the spaghetti dinner that they're all operating from a baseline of genuine care, and he relaxes into that so happily.

He's on his best behaviour, but he isn't blind. He knows Shane is tightly wound and terrified of failure and exposure and letting people down. And he's absolutely heard the expectations of excellence in Yuna's words. She loves Shane so much, and she's already expecting him to be a role model and public spokesperson on LGBTQ+ issues thirty minutes after saying she's sorry she made him feel like he couldn't tell just her, his mom. For Shane, who Ilya knows is dedicated to rising to meet expectations—"Will you disappoint them?" "No."—that's brutal.

So I don't think Ilya would castigate Shane for not appreciating his parents enough actually. I think by his middle twenties he definitely understands that there's room in loving, caring relationships for people to mess up and step on each other's feelings. I don't think he'd pull the 'at least you have a mother' card. Because this definitely isn't his first look in at someone else's family dynamic ever. Maybe he said all that at some point when he was like thirteen and a child and hurting so badly, but I don't see Ilya, who reads people so well, who does have at least one longtime close friend with an interesting family situation (even if we get scraps of Svetlana's family/their shared childhood), deciding that the Hollander parents are perfect and Shane is an ingrate.

Shane is safe with his parents. He likes them. He reverts a little to childhood snark and sure, he takes his bad mood out on them a little in one scene when he's in a complete emotional tailspin and can't talk about it with anybody. Crucially, they were pushing him, and he pulled back on that bad mood as soon as he caught himself, and was willing to let them see a true reaction in the first place. David opens up the floor to talk about anything that might be bothering Shane in a way that says this has probably happened before—something bubbling under for Shane that makes it hard for him to put a smile on. Shane says no, but he forces that smile for them anyway. He steps away. David pushes back on Yuna's approach now they're alone. She acknowledges that she was doing too much. Nobody succeeded here. They all love each other anyway.