No Takebacks

When this half-season (wtf, ABC Family) began, back in June, I observed that it seemed as though the show's producers might be trying to make a point with regard to the nature vs. nurture question, as the two switched daughters suddenly found themselves trying out living with their respective sets of biological parents. As the half-season (eye-roll) has progressed, it has seemed as though Regina (Constance Marie) and Angelo (Gilles Marini) might be headed toward a lasting reconciliation -- but in the latest episode, Regina closed the door on that possibility. So...how do we feel about that?

Over the course of the show's not that many episodes, producers have carefully drawn a portrait of Regina and Angelo's relationship before the start of the series, including all its "but"s. They really loved each other...but she had a pretty serious drinking problem. He wanted to raise their child with her...but he could never get over his suspicions that she'd cheated on him when Daphne looked so fair. When he and Regina parted -- with her staunchly insisting that she'd never cheated on him, which we knew she hadn't -- Angelo sort of left himself on the hook as the only father Daphne had ever known...but was also really ever around after that.

Since the events of the show's plot have brought the characters back into contact, things have only been more complicated. Angelo has run afoul of the Kennishes, the couple who raised his biological daughter, Bay (Vanessa Marano); embroiled Regina in a green-card wedding to prevent his deportation after some mysterious unfortunate relationship with another woman in Italy threatened his status in the U.S.; managed to be the only person to benefit financially from the civil suit against the hospital that switched the two titular girls. This week's episode paid off the plotline revolving around Angelo's having gotten Lana (Annie Ilonzeh) pregnant: despite Lana's having arranged for baby Abby's adoption by another couple, Angelo's "good lawyers" got him custody on the basis of a DNA test, and Abby is delivered to his apartment, in which Regina is also currently living and out of which Bay has just moved in order to make room for her sister.

As Regina coos over the baby (who is, for the record, pretty fucking cute), it's clear that Angelo sees this development as his chance at a do-over not just as a parent but as part of a family: we have no reason to think that Lana is going to reappear, and just as that first episode of the summer showed the two girls realigned with their biological families, now Angelo and Regina are married, cohabitating, and suddenly joined by a baby: the current arrangement of Angelo's life looks a lot like where he was seventeen years ago, up to and including their collapsing in exhaustion after finally getting said baby to sleep and then getting it on.

It sure seems like it would be easy for them to decide to be a real couple again and co-parent Abby...so it's a good thing Regina has the sense not to fall back into her old role. She's kind and practical as she tells Angelo she doesn't want to raise another baby at this stage in her life -- a pretty solid position. What she doesn't say, but that this viewer could, is that Angelo's whole smooth-talking gigolo thing makes a lot of people overlook the fact that he's still sketchy as hell. This summer alone he's joined the local country club to position himself to make friends with rich people who could potentially help him get his restaurant off the ground (which...that's what he wants to do now? He's not a musician?) and flirted like mad both with the wealthy dowagers at the club and with Regina's boss.

Meanwhile, Angelo's fight for Abby's custody, despite his testimony back in the civil case about his regrets over not having been in Bay's early life, seems like pure selfishness -- a chance for him to use his new money and the influence it buys to dominate others. I mean, it only seemed to take a few hours for him to lose the glow of new fatherhood and be totally at a loss as to how to calm down his screaming baby. So even though Regina doesn't say she's leery of getting back into a full-on relationship with Angelo because she's fairly sure it'll end in her raising Abby alone when he fucks back off to Europe, that's what I think would happen, which is why I support both her decision not to take back up with him formally, and her decision to get a leg over him one last time. I mean, I'm suspicious, not blind.