I think the whole cast did a great job this season and have been doing a great job throughout the whole show, but there were two standouts in particular to me: Benjamin Norris as Trent Harrison, and Jaren Lewison as Ben Gross.
I’ll admit, Trent has always made me chuckle, sometimes he’s annoyed me just as much as the characters in the show have been by him (see season 2’s “mountain dew” comment, which made me want to vomit), but overall I thought he was usually a nice bit of comic relief. But I think I did want more from him. I wanted him to evolve past just being “Paxton’s sidekick”. With characters like his though, they usually either get flanderised, lose what them appealing in the first place, or disappear altogether. I’m thankful he didn’t get any of that. Instead, he was given a rather sweet arc that didn’t upstage anyone in the cast, but still made him shine in his own right. And that’s not even mentioning his relationship with Eleanor, which, if I’m being honest, was probably my favorite subplot of the season. I’ll admit that when they were paired up at the end of season 2, I was worried this would become a boring “pair the spares” situation that felt forced and like a waste of time, but Ramona and Benjamin brought a lot of chemistry to this relationship and, surprisingly, I found myself rooting for these two.
Now though, I want to talk about Ben. I want to talk about Jaren’s performance. I think it’s safe to say that Ben was a bit sidelined this season. At least in the first half. Until episode 5, maybe 4, I don’t think I could say he was very present in the show, at least not in the same way he was in the first two seasons. During the first three episodes, we didn’t see a lot of him, and when we did, he was playing a supporting role in Aneesa’s storyline. We got some breadcrumbs of what was to come, sure, but nothing substantial, and nothing that was just Ben’s storyline. Episodes 4 and 5 gave us a better look into his life, but I felt it was still build up to when we were gonna see his story more in-depth, we weren’t there yet. Episode 6, though, that was the big one. This is the first time all season we’ve gotten a look into his life without it being anchored in a supporting role for another character. What’s important about everything before this moment, is that it’s passively shown, which is where Jaren comes in. Episode 6, cannot stick the landing without all of the slow buildup we’ve had before. After getting dumped by Aneesa, Ben doesn’t have a lot of support, so we don’t see into his world like we would Devi or Paxton’s, by him talking to other people, getting his own narration, or people talking about him. We get it through quick camera cutaways or small interactions, and all of this is carried by Jaren’s performance. We have to see the way all this pressure is slowly building up around him, the way he’s pining after Devi but still trying to let go, but we’re not gonna know how bad it really is until episode 6. After this, things may seem like they slow down for Ben, but they don’t. It’s once again passively shown, albeit less passively than the front half of the season, but we can still see that he’s on the upswing for the latter half of the season. That’s what makes the finale so satisfying, not just for Devi, but for Ben as well. With Devi we got to see her whole story unfold, but Ben had to take a step away. He had spent the prior season and a half almost latched onto Devi in some way, subconsciously in-universe, but also out of universe in terms of the narrative. After he tried to kiss Devi at his birthday party in 1x08, he was explicitly cemented in the story as her love interest. That’s great for us Benvi shippers but he wasn’t able to stand on his own again until this season. Because he knew he had to let go of whatever could’ve been with Devi. He couldn’t keep being apart of her story. He had to work on his own. And that’s why we didn’t see a lot of it. But that’s also why the Ben who clearly needed to slow down but sped up instead is not the same Ben we see at the end of the season. That’s why the Ben who clearly needed support but wasn’t reaching out to anyone is not the same Ben we see at the end of the season. That is why Ben is not the same person at the end of the season as he was at the start. He’s gone through his strongest character arc yet, but the real marvel is we didn’t even get to see all of it and it’s still one of the most captivating storylines of the season. And it’s because Jaren was able to show us that slow build in the little time he had in the first few episodes and then throughout.
