Constructive Sisterism

Though it's still very new, one of the attributes of Togetherness that marks its assurance even at this very early stage is that its characters are so well-defined, you can shuffle them up in any pairing and get a scene that advances the viewer's understanding of their relationship, and of each of them individually. Brett/Michelle and Tina/Alex have, obviously, gotten the most play, but last week we got a tiny but extremely effective look at Tina/Brett.

And while we only get one scene of Tina/Michelle in the latest episode, it ends up being the most pivotal one, and gives us a glimpse at what years of their shared history have probably been like.

Tina's coming off a phone call with Alex in which she assumes that he'll agree to perform as a clown at an upcoming kid's birthday party at which the parents have booked one of her bouncy castles, and doesn't understand why the request makes him mad enough to hang up with her: as she says, because he's an actor, he can just act like a clown. But since she apparently goes straight from the call to Brett and Michelle's, a conversation with her sister forces her to face the other reason Tina assumed Alex would do it: because she asked him to.

Michelle has to know this not just from the evidence of the past few weeks Tina's been staying with her but, of course, from having lived so much of their lives together. This can't be the first time Tina's using her beauty and charisma to make nonverbal promises to a man that she has no intention of fulfilling, in order to get her way in the short term. And though Tina can deny it and mean it -- can sincerely believe she isn't being "a cocktease" with Alex -- the trap of privilege is that you don't know it's a tool you use because you don't even consciously understand that you have it. Tina's privilege, as a pretty, charming woman, has been on display throughout the season, from her confidence in a high-pressure Hollywood party (positive) to her yanking Alex away from her friend after the two-stepping group date just because she doesn't want anyone else to have him (...uh, negative).

Tina would probably never recognize these incidents as part of a pattern of behaviour without having it pointed out to her. Hearing it from Alex is not that effective, though, since he's a relatively new acquaintance as well as -- though she'd never put it this way -- a low-status man whose opinion she can safely ignore. But when Michelle corroborates Alex's accusation, gently but firmly suggesting, "I do think that you could be a little more careful with the people in your life who really matter to you," Tina has to pay attention. Sure, at first she defaults to open hostility.

And then, when Michelle elaborates with examples of how decent people treat their friends considerately, Tina is dismissively sarcastic.

Tina can't be chastened or take Michelle seriously in the moment because, from Tina's subconscious perspective, Michelle is a low-status woman whose choices Tina, in many ways, disdains -- and given Tina's bold aggression and Michelle's recessive self-denial, it's easy to imagine them having had the same dynamic since they were both very young. (That their roles are and have been so ingrained for so many years is also shown in the way Tina reacts to Michelle getting a text from David. Tina teases her briefly by calling David Michelle's "boyfriend," but doesn't bother pointing out to Michelle that Michelle could also be a little more careful with the people in her life who really matter to her -- for instance, her husband, whom she'd spent most of the season trying to avoid even before she fell into this emotional affair with another man.) But the proof of how much Michelle's good opinion means to Tina, whether Tina would admit it out loud or not, is that she takes on Michelle's (probably therapized) criticism and reacts: she uses her privilege with Larry, for good, and -- in a conversation we don't see -- convinces him to consider Alex for a role in his next movie. Michelle has told her that when you're friends with someone "you do nice things for them"? From Tina's perspective, this is a nice thing.

Of course, that Larry is only considering him isn't how Tina presents it to Alex. She tells him nothing about the role; she makes it seem as though putting himself on tape is a mere formality -- just to get him to go along with her scheme and forgive her earlier denigration of his professional worth by imagining he'd play a clown for her. She assumes that, since he's a struggling actor, he'll be so excited about the chance to be in a movie in any capacity that he'll overlook the fact that the job is to play the funny fat guy who gets killed as a joke, and that his audition is not a formality but the real thing. She turns out to be wrong, with the possible consequence that their friendship really is over this time. But the fact that she even went to this much effort on Alex's behalf is proof that however much she may seem to downgrade Michelle, Tina knows that Michelle knows her best. It's a lot of history and subtext to pack into their one scene together, but then again, that's kind of what sisterhood is.