𓆝 𓆟 𓆞

at its core: gymnastics culture is the embodiment of achieving an impossible standard of perfection. it gives you an incredible work ethic but more often than not (especially in the 90s-early 2010s) is so damaging.

it means trinity grew up with 8am saturday practices, having to wake up at 5:30am for all-day competitions every other week, 4 hour long practices after eight hours of school, and then staying up all night to finish homework before doing it all over again the next morning

it also means being in an environment where if one kid gets caught cheating on conditioning - the entire team is punished for it with more reps

essentially throughout trinity’s entire childhood — she was held to a higher standard of discipline and responsibility than most of the adults in her life are now

so of course she thinks langdon needs to repent by telling everyone what he did. because gymnastics culture teaches you that the failure of one person is meant to be seen by the collective.

These are my nurses, and I choose what cases they work on. And if you think for one minute I'm putting anyone else from my staff at risk with that asshole, you better give your fucking head a shake.

there are setups for both, but only one is fleshed out and finished. the show starts something up throughout two seasons about abbot contradicting robby a lot, and caring about samira and her potential. he says she's smarter than anyone there in a deleted scene in the pilot, we have the pigtail scene, several MCI scenes. and in season two we have the orlando case, and finally the part where samira intends on asking him for a rec letter. but these are all starting points with no end point.

orlando never gets brought up again, even when he returns for the worse and makes samira's day worse; something he cared about earlier. we never hear about the rec letter ever again, even though it was clearly shown to display him having shown appreciation for her career in opposition to robby. and it ends up looking like abbot is only there to contradict robby's statements. she's slow, abbot shows us she isn't. she's unfit to work there, we see she isn't. we see the cares too much, we hear that it is a quality and not a flaw. but it never truly advances her story or goes anywhere, it only adds depth to robby via abbot.

and it's not that these scenes don't create depth and beauty to samira's character, but to me it feels like quite a few of her scenes are not created for her, but to advance something else. the depth and beauty of her story feels like a byproduct and not the purpose.

instead of an actual bond between them that leads anywhere, their interactions are almost the only inkling we have of the narrative disagreeing with robby about samira. he's there to show us that she's capable, but by not finishing that arc, it never happens. we don't get a finished story about her belonging, because he never interacts with her again after orlando in 2x7. we never hear about the rec letter, and he's only there for a tiny bit of contradiction to robby's story. it wasn't written for her, it wasn't written for her story and her belonging and her place in medicine.

it ends with him comforting robby with his struggles, while never seeing samira again. it ends with robby's story feeling finished, while she's doing worse than ever. why set up something that has so much potential in both samira's story and in relation with how robby views her, only to complete one part of it and ignore the other. it could have been so interesting to witness the complexities between abbot/samira/robby and how abbot and robby have opposing views but still care for each other. how samira grapples with different types of mentors and support.