Good Parenting

Maybe it’s having only half the episodes to which we’ve become accustomed. Maybe it was a week of filler stories – updating us on characters we haven’t seen for awhile and building the bases of new storylines. Or maybe too much Tracy and Michelle and who cares. Whatever, I was hard pressed to find a scene that stood out this week. But a rare moment of good parenting happened.

The scene that choked me up a bit was Steve finding Ryan at the bus stop and giving him his guitar back. Ryan had hocked it for drug money and Steve bought it back. Steve said “your mum and I”, but I suspect this was Steve’s idea. Nicely done, Steve. He didn’t get all emotional, didn’t plead, didn’t preach. Just handed it to him and said he knew it meant a lot to him. When Ryan said he didn’t want it, Steve just said fine, keep it, sell it, do what you want with it, it’s yours and then walked away.

But he didn’t go far, just around the corner enough that he could quickly come back in time to see Ryan break down crying. Then a lovely moment where I actually felt sorry for Ryan, as he cried in Steve’s arms and Steve gave him manly ‘there there’ pats.

Good parenting for Ryan, but for Amy?

In those moments, Steve did good parenting. Gave exactly what was right and needed by Ryan. I don’t know what Michelle would have done but it would have involved over the top histrionics and would have just made everything worse.

Earlier in the week, when Ryan went missing from the flat where Michelle had him under house arrest, Steve didn’t show such good parenting with his own kid. Tracy asked him to look after Amy while she went for a job interview. He said yes until Michelle came in a panic because Ryan had gone walkabout. And Steve threw Amy to the wind and said he couldn’t possibly tend her because he had to help Michelle.

What? Ryan is an adult, a stupid one admittedly, but still an adult of legal age. Michelle has been his sole parent for his entire life. Amy is a child, Steve’s child and Steve’s responsibility. And at least on the surface of it, Tracy’s request was perfectly reasonable and justified. Steve has wanted her to get a job; she had an interview and needed his help with Amy. And he blew her off for Michelle and her adult son.

Payback is – well, Tracy. She is glommed all over Ryan. Calls herself a cougar. She got herself a job, working with Ryan at Dev’s kebab shop and she created her own fairly easy job of seducing Ryan. This time you asked for it, Steve.