If getting arrested isn’t bad enough, imagine the door of the police car swinging open and there’s your uncle Richard. Standing next to Katherine. Standing next to George.
Three adults. One driveway. Zero mercy.
And here’s the thing — Cole, Alex, and Jackie were still managing to laugh a little in the back of that car. It was an epic night. Every teenager deserves one story exactly like this. I genuinely cannot be mad at them for taking advantage of an empty house and throwing a party, because Grace had the time of her life.
Grace’s dance moves were, admittedly, questionable. They’re not wrong about that.
It was a good time. And now everyone’s going to pay for it, and one of them is going to pay a great deal more than the others.
The living room tribunal
Back at the Walter house, the kids get sent upstairs while the adults talk.
And Richard, predictably, cannot compute. He’s delusional. He holds Jackie above everyone — he cannot believe she’d do something like this. She never did this kind of thing in New York.
He says she needs structure.
Richard is acting like she’s a criminal. Yes, I know she broke the law and I know she made her mistakes. She knows that.
But Richard is out of line.
Katherine is willing to talk back. She says no. She needed a family. Which is part of why her mother left her to them in the first place.
That’s the whole argument of this episode in two lines, honestly. Richard has always struggled with that decision, and I don’t think he’s ever really processed it.
Also, sir, life for kids in New York is not some purer state of being. It’s just different. Things absolutely would have happened there too — they’d have just happened in an apartment with a doorman and nobody would have called George.
Or you.
They land on a week of grounding. And instead of grounding all of them under one roof, they send Jackie to Richard’s for the week — so her punishment isn’t a seven-day sleepover with her boyfriend.
(Nobody in that room knows about the sex. That is a separate and forthcoming catastrophe.)
So she packs a bag, and Cole comes into her room to see what’s happening. She tells him, and he says it’ll be okay.
I hope it will. I have concerns.
“I expect more of you“
She gets to Richard’s, and he doesn’t even wait for her to unpack. He lays into her like she made page six.
I’m disappointed in you. Cole and Alex can act however they want, but he expects more from her — as a Howard, and as a Ruiz.
Sorry, not sorry – f**k you Richard. That’s uncalled for.
Absolutely not.
That is a devastating thing to say to a seventeen-year-old, and it’s unfair on every level. He’s invoking two dead parents as a behavior standard. She got a warning at a house party. She is being a teenager, which is a thing she’s barely been allowed to be since the accident.
Yes, the house is a mess. But also yes, she’s willing to do what it takes to clean it up. Don’t act like you’re above reproach Richard.
You’re not.
A broken table and a drunken proposal
Cole is up early scrolling for a replacement table for the one that got smashed, and it is very expensive. But at least he’s up and scrolling.
Dammit, he says.
Which wakes up Danny, who has apparently been texting with Erin all morning. Because he drunkenly proposed at the party. And she said yes. And he does not know what to do.
Cole’s advice is right and simple and repeated – talk to her. Talk to her. You have to talk to her.
Don’t know how many versions of talk to her he can say.
But first he gets one joke in — I didn’t think I’d have to write another wedding speech this soon.
Fair. Valid. On brand.
Danny is scared to talk to her. And I think Erin is scared too. Which is the entire reason you don’t have emotional conversations while drunk — you write a check your sober self has to cash in a school hallway.
Richard goes fully off the rails
Richard has gone ballistic.
He takes Jackie’s phone to track her, because he doesn’t know if she’ll skip school, doesn’t know if she’ll go to a party. Then he informs her he’s hired a college application coach and she needs a full portfolio and application ready.
In a day? That’s not enough time.
Make the time. The old Jackie Howard would.
And there it is. The whole problem, said out loud. He doesn’t get she’s not the Jackie Howard she was when her parents were alive. He wants the girl from before, and every time she isn’t her, he reads it as failure instead of grief.
Then Elliott walks in and offers to help. Jackie says she doesn’t need Elliott’s help, but it is already in his calendar, he doesn’t mind. I mean obviously a calendar means it is fact and has to be that way. Richard says great.
Along the lines of punishment, she also gets her car taken away until she can be trusted again.
This is disproportionate and it’s escalating and it’s going to break something. Most likely their relationship and that sucks.
Hannah gets a job (sort of)
Hannah, in all her infinite wisdom, applies for a job as sommelier — and the employer calls Katherine to verify. She is definitely not a sommelier.
Katherine is honest about it. She’s creative, which may be the reason for the confusion. But no. Has she drank wine? Yes. Studied it? No.
George, in the background: oh my God.
Katherine goes out to talk to her, and I think she’s going to have to twist arms to get answers. But Hannah gets there first: I shouldn’t have put you in that position without telling you.
Correct. Katherine tells her plainly that she can’t lie. This town trusts me. Which is fair, because Katherine is going to stay living there and she needs that trust.
Hannah says she just wanted her to vouch for her, for her and her boys — the jobs she’s actually qualified for don’t pay enough. Hannah may not get it, but I hope that one day she will.
And here’s why Katherine Walter is the best adult on this show. Instead of leaving it there, she says: we’ll find something and in the meantime, let’s get you some work experience. You like working with animals, right?
Yeah.
So Katherine’s going to bring her into the clinic. Which — I don’t see it going smoothly. But at least somebody is trying to build her a floor to stand on.
Cole gets a no
Cole asks his parents if there’s any way he can go to the banquet with Jackie.
They look at him like he’s insane.
I get it. He wants to be there for her, and it’s genuinely sweet. He also threw a party with underage drinking four days ago. And also — the parents are overreacting just slightly, across the board.
I think that it’s unfair that everyone keeps blaming Cole for the party. I think it’s unfair that he’s being looked at as the influence, when the real influence was Jackie and Grace.
He’s disappointed. It makes perfect sense.
Blake plays referee
At the Hartfords’, Blake lectures Wilder and Alex: no more infighting. This nonsense is ridiculous. Put it behind you.
Neither one of them is remotely capable of that right now.
She tells Alex to find a way to get along, and he says he’s tried, and she says try harder.
It is unfair that no one remembers there is a huge age difference and Alex is being used to grow up in a way that would be hard for anyone at his age.
the social afterglow
Jackie’s at school, working on her portfolio and application, when Grace and Skylar walk up, both riding high — the party made them a little bit popular, and Grace made out with a hot guy.
For Grace, life is complete.
And Jackie is taking a bath in her own stress, because she has so much on her plate and she’s the one being punished hardest. But she’s trying to be a supportive friend anyway, which is Jackie in a nutshell: drowning, still holding the door.
Hell, she’s building the door for everyone in the midst of her own anguish.
Danny lies and it lands badly
Danny’s walking down the hall when Erin catches up. He’s regretting everything that happened. She wants to talk. Is everything okay?
Really? People aren’t freaking out?
He believes that she thought the proposal was real. She’s been carrying it around all day. So he makes he a choice that is the worst choice.
And Danny decides to play it off like he doesn’t remember anything.
Danny. No. Never the move.
You don’t remember anything?
I remember having a good night with you. I remember Grace dancing.
He’s lying through his teeth and you can see it, and she just looks hurt and says okay and walks off. But it’s the look on her face that breaks me, because to any girl that would be a lot.
He knows she remembers. The look on his face afterward is pure I just hurt her, which is the one thing he never wants to do to anybody. Especially not to Erin.
He should have taken Cole’s advice. But he’s Danny, and Danny would rather absorb the damage than risk causing it — which, ironically, is how he caused it.
Brothers, going backwards
Cole and Alex are working together, and Cole asks when he’s getting the full sleeve. That stupid H is prominent and looking for an infection to happen.
Alex says he wouldn’t get it — it’s a riding thing.
Alex wouldn’t get it because it’s a human thing.
Cole looks at him like he’s lost his mind. And then Alex defends the guys who are a substantial part of why they were in a squad car, and says, “I liked it better when you didn’t take an interest in what I do.”
Cole is reading between the lines. These two are like girls in a b**ch fight. So Cole says, “oh, so me and Jackie are the problem?”
Alex liked it better when Cole didn’t pay attention. He wants him off his back.
Alex isn’t being fair. Alex is rarely being fair.
And Cole just says okay — which is worse than fighting back.
I was loving where that relationship was going. This is a step backward and I don’t like it one bit.
Cole brings her a sandwich
Jackie’s working through lunch on the portfolio when Cole walks over and hands her a sandwich, because you’ve got to eat, and sits down next to her. He wants to take care of her.
Richard has texted three times in an hour.
Jackie is loosing it. She is working on it, she says, and she’s so frustrated — if she isn’t perfect, he goes ballistic, and she can’t function under that.
Cole says he’s just looking out for you. He loves you. Cole isn’t wanting more Drama. He’s wanting an end to the drama.
She’s too annoyed to hear it. He says they’ll make up. She says at this point, she doesn’t care.
She asks whether he can come to the banquet, and he says yeah, that didn’t go well.
Which it didn’t. And they’ll survive a little time apart. Probably.
the thing Richard needs to hear
Richard’s out shopping with Ms. Jacobs, ostensibly for the dinner, and of course they end up talking about Jackie.
And she is so level about it: they got a warning. They made a mistake. Jackie does all these amazing things — you have to give her room to make mistakes.
Unfortunately Richard doesn’t seem to know how to listen, because he hears her, but we learn later, he’s not actually listening.
And then Richard admits something real. He made a lot of mistakes as a kid, and he thinks that’s why he wasn’t given custody of Jackie when her parents died.
Oh.
Oh.
That reframes so much. Every white-knuckle grip he’s had on this girl is him trying to prove he’s the responsible one. He’s not parenting her — he’s litigating a decision that was made about him years ago. He’s making Jackie feel like her life there is small, because he doesn’t think he was enough.
And Ms. Jacobs tells him: you can hold on, but you can’t hold on that tightly.
He knows she’s right. He just needed to hear it from someone who isn’t in the middle of it.
Which makes what he does later in this episode so much worse.
Alex volunteering for pain
Wilder’s putting on his vest when he makes a noise, and Blake catches it instantly: your shoulder’s hurt, you’re not riding like that.
He insists he’s fine. Your daddy needs his prize money.
She shuts it down — my Dad put me in charge for a reason.
Alex, wanting to show that he’s an important part of the team says that he can do it.
She looks at him and says no. Some people ride bareback and never ride again.
He insists. She agrees.
I do not see this ending well, but here we are.
Elliott and the tell
At Richard’s, Elliott tells Jackie the portfolio is great, so she asks him to run interview questions.
He asks what she doesn’t want to hear, “did you really get arrested?”
No. They got a warning. She tells him she doesn’t need his nonsense.
And then he says something genuinely useful — he thinks Richard is going overboard. He did the same things as a kid. His parents were away most weekends, he threw parties.
He just never got caught.
Richard walks in and they both instantly pivot to talking about school, and Richard and Jackie leave.
I still don’t fully trust Elliott. But that was the first moment he felt like an actual friend instead of an ambassador from her old life.
a ring that isn’t a ring
Erin and Danny go out for pizza, and Danny finally tells her the truth – he remembers everything. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t want her to feel like she had to say yes.
Well, Danny after you propose to someone and then act like you don’t get it – that’s jacked.
She still would say yes. She wants to say yes.
So he gets the food to go, and they walk to a gazebo, and he gives her one of his own rings — and tells her that when they’re ready to tell everyone, he’ll get her a real one.
And she gives him a necklace that belonged to her father, and says she knows her dad would have loved him.
I still think this is going to be complicated. I still don’t know how any of this works with two kids about to graduate into completely different futures.
But that gazebo scene was tender in a way this show does better than almost anyone. They mean it. Whether meaning it is enough is a whole different question.
Hannah’s first real day
At the clinic, Hannah’s panicking — the place is full and a cat’s been hit by a car and she doesn’t know what to do, so she goes to call Dr. Walter. At first I thought she was going to try to treat the cat herself.
But what steadies her is the photo of her boys.
That’s the detail that got me. She’s inspired by a picture of her own children to stay in the room and handle it.
She calls Katherine, who comes back and tells her she did the right thing. Which I’m grateful for, because Hannah needs positive reinforcement from someone who isn’t grading her on three years of absence.
I still feel like she’s going to let Isaac and Lee down again. I still don’t have much room for her. But she stayed in the room today, and that’s not nothing.
the friendship worth protecting
Alex goes in for pizza and Kiley says this one’s on the house. He says she doesn’t have to do that. She says she does, after everything. These two have survived a lot in their friendship and I do believe they can this, but it won’t be easy.
Then he goes to sit down, and she tells the guy she’s taking her break, and follows him over.
You can’t avoid me forever.
I mean — he could. But he says he isn’t avoiding her.
And they land on being okay. And I hope they mean it, because their friendship is the kind of friendship you could only hope to have in your life. Two people who’ve known each other since kindergarten, who keep getting the timing wrong, and who keep choosing each other anyway.
Jackie stops swallowing it
At the banquet, Richard has no faith in Jackie and he can’t hide it.
He points out Martina — the application coach – go talk to her. And Jackie asks if she can do it later, because the city council is right there and she has been trying to get in front of them for weeks.
And Richard says no. You need to focus on your future first.
Ok, but she is.
Your future?
Your future. As if the community center isn’t a future. As if the thing she’s building isn’t real work.
Then he calls Martina and Ms. Jacobs over, and he and Jackie start needling each other in front of them. She’s trying so hard. And she cannot make him understand that she isn’t the person she was in New York. You can see it in her eyes.
Martina and Ms. Jacobs excuse themselves, because the temperature in that conversation is unbearable.
And then Jackie and Richard sit down, and that bomb – it detonates.
He says he thinks it went well — Martina said she’ll talk to her later.
And Jackie says she didn’t need an application coach. What she needs is for him to see that my life in Silver Falls isn’t a waste of time.
Because that’s what he keeps implying. Every time she mentions the community space, he diminishes it — and the reality is she is trying to build somewhere safe, somewhere that brings a whole town together, and he can’t see past a college application.
He thinks that it is building a party house.
You don’t know who I am anymore. And you don’t even take the time to try to figure out who I am anymore. So what does that say about you?
And then the killing blow – my mom didn’t want me living with you — what does that say?
As if that isn’t enough, she goes deeper. She quips, you didn’t care last summer. You spent every week in Europe rather than spending any time with me and never tried.
Every word land in him. And he has no idea what to say. And everyone in that room is watching.
She refuses to calm down, because calming down means he talks over her.
And that’s the saddest part of the whole scene: she has to yell for him to hear her. She has been polite and accommodating and excellent for a year, and none of it registered. Volume is the only tool she has left.
Alex, Wilder, and 25%
When Alex tried, Alex keeps getting bucked off, over and over, while Reid and Wilder laugh at him flying through the air, which is genuinely not okay. Blake tells him it’s time to stop — she can’t watch this. Alex is annoyed and insists, because what’s she going to tell her dad? And she says she’ll think of something.
When Wilder walks into the pizza place – he knows that he has to make nice.
The two people who can’t stand each other realize they have to work together — Alex needs to learn to ride bareback, and Wilder is the only one who can teach him. They need to work together.
They don’t have to like each other. Blake needs them both.
So Wilder agrees to help. For 25% of Alex’s winnings.
Of course he does.
Alex Walter is going to break something in his body before he breaks the silence in his head. Watch.
Cole sells his car
Cole asks Tony for more shifts and Tony says he just doesn’t have the work. Which is fair. Cole can be disappointed, and Tony’s being honest, and both things are allowed. I admire that Cole is trying to fix things, while also giving up on things that he doesn’t want to give up on.
So Cole takes his car out one last time with Dylan. Because he’s going to sell it. To pay for the table, and to make things right for Jackie.
Let me say that again: Cole Walter is selling the car he loves, the thing that’s his, to fix a table at a party he threw for his girlfriend’s best friend.
#Growth.
And then he goes to Richard to make it right.
What Richard says to Cole
When Cole shows up at Richards door, he shows that he’s the worst. I want to like Richard, but I also don’t think what he’s said and. done is right. Richard tells him he’s a bad influence on Jackie. That he is the reason her life is going off the rails.
No.
Absolutely not.
Jackie made those decisions herself. She didn’t do a single thing because of Cole. She did them because she wanted to, because she’s seventeen, because she has been carrying a mountain and wanted one night off.
For Richard to sit there and tear Cole down — to make a boy who is literally selling his car to fix his mistake feel like the rot in her life — is genuinely awful.
Yes, Jackie had a meltdown at a banquet. Take some responsibility for that, Richard. That is yours, not Cole’s.
You can watch it destroy him. And Richard was so far out of line I could scream.
The staircase
Cole waits for Jackie in the staircase at school, and she’s thrilled to see him, and he is just down. I feel so awful for him.
Hey.
I miss you.
I miss you.
And then she tells him: she’s decided she doesn’t want to go to Greece. She wants to spend the summer doing something for herself. And she wants to go on a road trip. With him.
And he says it sounds great.
While his eyes fill with tears.
Because he’s just been told by the man who runs her family that he’s the worst thing that ever happened to her, and now she’s handing him a summer, and he doesn’t believe he deserves it.
Somebody needs to intervene here. Katherine. George. Anyone. Because Richard is so far out of bounds that he’s going to push Jackie right over the edge — and he’s going to convince the one person who has genuinely made her happy that he should walk away first.
Silver Falls, protect that boy. I’ll be here for a bit – still furious.
