The Backstory

I knew long before S3 came out that Schneider was getting a love interest this season, and that she was going to be played by Todd’s wife, who I wasn’t familiar with at all besides his Instagram photos. I’m not even sure I knew she was an actress until they announced her guest starring role. Because they announced it early, I had a lot of time to build up anxiety over it.

I’m as deep into this fandom as I am because I ship Schneider with Penelope. I love the show exactly as it is, and if they never become canon I won’t love it any less, but that doesn’t change the fact that: 1) I watched the show; 2) I started shipping them; 3) I decided to write my first fic for a sitcom because of them; 4) through fic I made friends and developed headcanons and made more friends and managed to keep writing through some really rough life events; and 5) then from filming announcements and through the fandom, I found out Avery was coming and that the show was going to be including the weird Pen/Schneider sibling vibe in S3.

So before S3 premiered I was really, genuinely scared I might not enjoy S3 as much as I adored S2. What if I hated it? What if I hated Schneider’s new girlfriend??? I wanted to like her so much because I knew the actress was Todd’s wife, but I had no idea if I COULD because I had no idea how they were going to include her or who she would be. And I’ve never hated Penelope’s love interests just because I like her with Schneider, but I had also met several of those by the end of S2. Schneider getting a girlfriend was new.

1. Todd and India have more than their fair share of chemistry. Who do I speak to about that?

Then, in 3x03, we meet Schneider’s new love interest–and I was basically Schneider (as I often am). From the glasses that don’t succeed at all in dulling how gorgeous she is to her nerdy interests and apparent mild social anxiety (when she asked ”are you making fun of me?” so sincerely, my heart just went…oh. oh okay.) I thought she was adorable and funny and even more than that, I’m SO weak for devoted men, I can’t even tell you.

Well, I don’t have to tell you. If you’ve read anything I’ve ever written about Penelope and Schneider, you know. I love men who love women so much they would do anything for them, especially when they’re quietly selfless about it but so in love that it just radiates out of them.

That’s how Schneider has always acted with Penelope, a little bit, even when he wasn’t trying. That’s why I fell for the ship.

But that’s also how TODD acts, opposite India–to a ridiculous degree, in a way that isn’t acting at all. You can feel it hitting you through the television, how lucky he feels just to be with her, just to be NEAR her. It’s so sweet, I die. Schneider/Avery isn’t even my OTP and I’m gonna make them a gifset at some point, just because I cannot handle the fact that Todd looks at his wife that way, every time he focuses on her.

So because this is clearly going to be long, to sum up point 1: Todd Grinnell, who plays Schneider, and his offscreen wife India de Beaufort, who plays Avery? Absolutely fantastic couple. I’m totally rooting for them, these strangers I don’t actually know. Just because watching them act together is a beautiful thing.

Also because India is a sweet human who told me on Twitter that the little nose rub between them after they reunite in 3x13 was improvised by them, not scripted. And you better believe I could not love that more if I tried. THEY ARE CUTE. Conclusion one.

2: Schneider and Avery have too little screen time to make sense as a couple.

ODAAT as a show is so strong because it holds the Alvarez/Riera family at its core and builds everything around them. You’re supposed to fall in love with them first, and grow to love the supporting characters around them, as you slowly learn more about them.

Now, in some cases, it’s not a slow process. It didn’t take me long to love Carmen or Schneider–it only took me one scene to love Syd. But the show’s purpose isn’t those characters, at least not at first. It’s Penelope’s family. And the rewarding thing about ODAAT is that the definition of ‘family’ grows and envelopes more of the characters, as time goes on.

Because Schneider was still a (fabulous, lovable) supporting character before S3, he was on the outside a bit, along with Dr. B. I think you can look at the show like a set of circles, with Penelope and Lydia and Elena and Alex in the center circle, then with Schneider & Dr. B. and Syd one ring just outside of that, revolving around them. The support group, most of Penelope’s love interests, and Elena and Alex’s friends are a ring outside of that.

S3 widened the inner circle and pulled Schneider in. It was the first season to actually dig into his backstory, the family he comes from, his sobriety. And while it was amazing, it was still just a start. It was the beginning of showing him as a full family member. It put him in the center circle, and that meant giving him more focused scenes, more story.

But the show is still also about the whole family, and S3 has the same amount of episodes as the first two did. The show included more Schneider, but still only fit in so much. And one consequence of that is that his relationship with Avery exists almost entirely offscreen. They told us more about it than they  showed, and let Todd and India’s chemistry fill in the gaps, the unanswered questions.

3. What we actually saw onscreen when it comes to Schneider and Avery.

A meet-cute, which was pretty well-done. We learn she’s a geek along with him, that they’re compatible in at least that one way. We learn they like each other pretty instantly, which isn’t always believable, but the show’s got to move at a fast pace and I respect that. We learn he likes her enough to argue with Nikki, and she likes him enough to do the same. She’s no pushover, and she inspires him to be stronger. A good start.

Schneider spends some time with Penelope in the next episode and Avery doesn’t come up at all. When we see her again, Schneider’s about to have his first real date with her, as far as I can tell, on Valentine’s Day. (No pressure or anything.) It’s clear that Penelope and Avery have met by now, though we don’t know when or how. By the end of the episode we know that Schneider and Avery spent most of their first date lying to each other.

The big reveal, that they have even more in common than they thought, was super predictable to me but still funny, and my only problem with it is that once they land that plot twist, it becomes Avery’s entire personality. She’s no longer the quirky kindergarten teacher who gets along with Schneider the hobbyist because she loves to write poems and appreciates his niche interests.

Now, she’s his rich girlfriend. They get along because when he needs to fix his expensive hot tub, she can suggest they just pay someone to do it. The next time we see her, Avery’s entire existence is a few lines that show how well she gets along with his father because HAHAHA money. And then? We don’t see her at all until her surprise return in the finale.

5. What we didn’t see onscreen between Schneider and Avery.

Offscreen, as far as I can tell, they had other dates, they seem like they were serious enough to probably have had sex, she clearly was invited to some dinners etc with the family (though we don’t know if she went), before he started drinking again and they broke up and then she avoided him completely until Lydia convinced her to give him another chance.

We know Schneider completely blames himself for their breakup, but we have literally no idea what happened to send her running scared. Did he start drinking in secret and she caught him? Did he start drinking around her openly because he thought her reaction would be different from his family’s? Did she leave him because of the drinking or because of some specific thing that happened while Schneider was drunk or for some other reason entirely???

Based on their conversation in the finale, something happened, whatever it was. And Avery definitely knew he needed to be sober, otherwise why else would she be scared to try again?

Therefore the single biggest conundrum that S3 left me with, especially the more I rewatched, was this:

Avery knew Schneider well enough to know he wasn’t supposed to be drinking, or enough to tell there was a problem when his drinking came to her attention. SOMETHING happened that was bad enough for them to break up, and for her to ghost him after.

Avery also knew that Schneider’s family of choice was Penelope and her mom and her kids. She’d met them often enough to be able to talk to them politely, to know where they live.

Why didn’t she say ANYTHING to ANYONE in that apartment as soon as things with Schneider imploded????

How is it that she could be aware enough of Schneider’s life to know his family/best friends, aware enough to be worried about his sobriety, and worried enough to decide they had no future, but not tell his family what was going on when she was clearly aware of it long before they were??

Even if she was unhappy and uncomfortable and didn’t want to get into relationship details with Penelope, she could have just mentioned the drinking part and cut off all further communication! She could have left a note at their door!! She works at Elena and Alex’s school teaching the little kids, presumably she might sometimes run into them on school grounds…and she never said anything.

It drives me crazy because maybe there’s a reasonable explanation for that, for all of it, but I would have no idea what it is, because all of that happened offscreen and wasn’t explored.

6. Why it matters.

With the family at the show’s core, and Schneider only recently included in that center, Avery falls in the outer ring. But because S3 tried to give Schneider more without giving the rest of the family less, there just wasn’t room to flesh out Avery enough.

If you compare her to Max in S2, we saw him interact with the whole family on multiple occasions. Because of that, we got to know him as more than just ‘Penelope’s casual sex buddy who she was friends with years ago.’ He and Pen weren’t my OTP either, but I genuinely liked them together because we understood why they worked. We saw them survive conflicts, face problems, have real conversations.

With Avery, we saw her and Schneider meet and then we saw them present fake bios to each other before the truth came out, and then we saw her be the perfect rich-son girlfriend before disappearing. Their conflicts were left to our imagination. Their deeper moments were left to our imagination. When they get back together, we see Avery after she’s already decided to try again, and Schneider apologizing for whatever exactly happened that we may never know.

As viewers, we can interpret that as generously as we want, but it still leaves us with a relationship that we’re told matters…because we’re told it does. Though I love Schneider and I hate seeing him in pain, ‘he’s sad without her’ is not a detailed case for why he belongs with Avery. And ‘because Lydia vouched for him’ is absolutely not a good enough explanation for why Avery belongs with him.

Even looking at it as though what we learned about her in the beginning holds true, we’re left to assume that Avery loves him enough to support him through his recovery and rebuild trust, because…they’re both pretty nerds with similar feelings about their family money? And he loves her so much he was in hell without her…because to him she’s a ‘perfect angel woman’ (which is so painfully idealistic of him, it makes sense for him but is also begging for him to be crushed again when she falls off that pedestal).

There are as many red flags in the screen time we do see as there are reasons to root for them. She claims to be miserable with inherited money just like he is, but she’s way more comfortable relying on it, talking about it in ways that we just don’t see Schneider do. And the whole point when Schneider’s father visits is that Schneider is not who Lawrence wants him to be–but as far as we know, Avery isn’t putting on an act to get along with him, the way Schneider does. She just IS enough like him. She’s very at ease on his level.

And don’t even get me started on Avery stopping Schneider’s joy over being an Alvarez to make him focus back on her. It’s a joke, but it’s also not a good sign for their future, if any part of her isn’t 100% comfortable with how important to him the whole family is.

7. My grand unifying theory.

I’m convinced that her lack of dimensions, and their relationship lacking depth as much as it does, is because writing Avery in involved bringing India on. I’m not saying I wish they hadn’t!! Again, I adore her. But it’s a problem, and here’s why.

Every serious love interest we’ve seen Penelope have, from Victor to Mateo, is in her orbit mainly, but also interacts with the rest of her life. Max got to know everybody, counseling Alex, being pestered by Schneider, flirted with by Lydia, etc. Victor was central to her life for a long time, so we learn a lot about him through his many family scenes. Mateo has scenes with Penelope mainly, but he’s around the family enough that we learn about him based on that proximity–how he feels about Alex, how his background compares to her family’s.

Avery is Schneider’s first serious love interest, and we see her interact with…Schneider. No conversations between her and Lydia, only one exchange with Penelope when Avery tries to mistakenly console her over being single, then they never directly speak again. Avery doesn’t ever talk to the kids, though they’re super important to his life.

As a show, ODAAT never made me consider the Bechdel test until I was trying to include Avery in an edit about the female character interactions and I realized that that one moment with Pen is the only one. As a character, her entire point, and focus, and existence even, is about Schneider. It wouldn’t be so weird if she were just another Stick Girl, but we’ve seen her included in family events. We know she knows the people in his life. We just don’t see her ever talk to any of them, and I don’t think that was a choice they made to keep her character secluded so much as it was a natural result of adding a character to the outer ring whose only purpose in the story is to date Schneider.

So they created a girlfriend for Schneider, and they worked her into the story enough to give them a relationship, and to make their breakup and reunion important plot points for Schneider’s S3 arc.

And because the show was more focused on the family, Avery’s character was only included where she absolutely had to be, to hit those plot points.

And because the actors have chemistry enough to sell it, ODAAT called that good enough for their characters and that relationship and kept moving.

It’s clear from social media that the cast and crew of the show adore Todd and India, and adore their onscreen relationship just as much. Because of that, I’m not sure if maybe they’re a little blinded to what the whole thing is like for the rest of us, who don’t know them personally, who don’t see Schneider/Avery first as an adorable ship starring these two cute dorks that so clearly are meant to be because the actors are.

But whatever the reason, I think a lot of the people involved in the show ship it harder than the viewers do. I ship Schneider/Avery because she makes him happy and the actors are fun to watch, but I hope they’re not endgame for all the above reasons.

Schneider deserves love and a future with someone, and even if he doesn’t end up with my personal choice for his ideal match, I still want that someone to make sense. I want to be able to root for them for reasons that exist in canon. If the show gets more seasons and we see Schneider and Avery work on/through some issues, if we see him start to treat her like a flawed person he loves rather than like someone he doesn’t deserve at all…if we get to see how the other important people in his life relate to her…then I’ll be more on board.