#max chapman

Max and Greta both decided to share a story about the first woman that they were romantically involved with. Max tells Carson that “it was more about their bodies” which I think is the situation that Carson has found herself in. It’s less about connection and more about catching up and racing against the clock. It’s something that Greta brings up multiple times but it’s associated with Charlie and not Max. All the couples were on timers…except Carson and Max.

When Carson asks Greta and Max the same question, she gets a definite answer from Greta that surprises her. Greta fills in the blanks of their relationship, there won’t be any surprise or anything left up to “fate” with them because that’s how their relationship is orchestrated. Max and Carson kept bumping and seeing each other, without trying, multiple times because the universe kept trying to get them to understand something. Their relationship wasn’t fixed or planned or pushed or pressured by anything but the universe. And when they find each other, they keep it to themselves. For themselves.

The writers could’ve easily dispelled their relationship by making one of the characters point out how many times they saw each other without actually getting to know each other. But instead Max doesn’t want to answer the question, not because she doesn’t care but because maybe she doesn’t want a definitive answer, it’s up to the universe again. They keep finding each other so how hard will it be to do again.

There were a couple things said by Abbi (Jacobson) in the ALOTO reunion 2025 that pointed me back in the direction of Carmax and Gretson being foils. She mentioned how, even though Carson and Greta bump into each other in NYC, Carson was there to see Max. She got a one way ticket to a foreign city to go see Max Chapman. But it’s Carson that wonders if they’ll “see each other again”, but she’s the one that ends up searching her out anyways even with an ambiguous answer from max. I think that Carson was going there because her and Max were together. How else do you get tickets to a probably sold out game and get a chance to meet the first Black woman to be a major leagues pitcher?

Because Carson is so new to being with women and coming into herself, she had less perspective on how relationships might look or conduct themselves. She needed to hear both stories for different reasons. Greta was sharing and reminding her about the dangers that she isn’t used to because from the outside she is a white woman. She doesn’t have to worry about if she’ll get her job, or people will look at her and turn her away, or to not get serviced in a grocery store. So she has to start off with her new boundaries of being queer. Max’s is more a situation of not every relationship holds the same weight. Not every relationship, even over years, is one that’s filled with love without lust. Max had a fling. She considered her first a fling. Carson seems to have never considered that an option. Carson married her childhood best friend because he was safe and comfortable. Not because he just “knew her” on a level that no one else understood. But just because he knew her.

Carson was very obviously pushed by Greta, confirmed by actors, but she never felt pushed or pressured by Max. Max felt like her last relationship, with a married woman, consisted of feeling like she needed to be someone else. But it’s an uncommented fact that Carson helps Max become more herself. Max uses the locker room to explain how she feels “tangled up into knots” but she can express this to Carson. Because Carson doesn’t make her feel that way. Carson helps her breath and throw straight and want to find herself and focus on what she really wants.

They both comment on Carson obviously being neurodivergent but only Max relates to her and smiles about it because it’s another thing that they have in common. They are two sides of the same coin.

Even Carson’s “game cards”, that Greta makes fun of, are pitching stats. PITCHING STATS. Max would probably find them to be the most interesting and compelling thing she’s seen in a while. I’m sure Carson even has a couple with Max’s name on them. Afterall, Max IS the best pitcher Carson has ever played with and Carson hit a ball thrown by Dove Porter (who is associated with her dad’s love of the game).