They change so

Michael flipping through the years in a photograph album of his son’s life, starting with baby pictures. When he reaches the preteen years, he starts to wonder. Granted, children change and Michael didn’t see Gavin during those years. But the boy in the photos bears absolutely no resemblance to the man sitting next to him.

The man he knows as Gavin is sweating it. He knows for sure the next pages, the adult Gavin, will give the game away. Behind them, Gail desperately seeks some way to stop Michael from looking at the pictures or somehow make what he’s seeing seem to fit the story she has helped spin about son Gavin.

Michael says it’s hard to believe how much kids can change. Gail seizes the opportunity: They change so! She grabs a photo of young David and shows it to Michael: “This is David when he was 9 or 10. He’s completely unrecognizable.” Michael looks and says “that looks exactly like David.”

Like two different people!

Gail studies the picture, as if she’s trying to see it through Michael’s eyes. “Give over, they’re like two completely different people.” Michael looks at her like she’s cracked!

It was a good payoff for a long wait. The Gavin identity story has been going on for a long time and it’s strained the limits of credibility. It’s hard to believe that they managed to keep the real Gavin’s death a secret from Michael. It was in the newspaper – didn’t someone besides Gail see it?

How could Michael not wonder about the secretive talks between Gail and Gavin/Andy and Steph? The man is not obtuse, but somehow he’s missed the tension snapping like lightning around that household.

An audience will suspend disbelief, even to an extreme degree, in order to get caught up in a good juicy story. But it was hard to picture big dramatic fireworks happening with Michael and Gavin/Andy. They’re just too nice, too ordinary.

Pick the other son?

It’s not over yet so maybe the big drama is yet to come. For me, Gail’s attempt to save the situation with David’s photo was enough on its own. It was very funny. The joke also worked at a meta level of television construction. Recasting.

Hey Gail, I thought, you should have grabbed a photo of Nick when he was young. Like this one here. Then she could say they change so! For sure it would prove that someone can grow up to look like a totally different person.

(There was yet another Nick in between. Adam Rickett played the young adult Nick on and off from 1997 to 2004. Gail could fill the mantelpiece just with the various incarnations of Nick.)