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Bette got up and cleaned up the kitchen and decided to start a pot of northern beans for lunch. She added the left-over bacon in the beans. She then started the dish washer and retrieved a clean mug and got herself another cup of coffee, tended the fire and then sat on the sofa
Thirty minutes later, Tina came out of her room and then went to the kitchen and got herself a cup of coffee. She then returned to the living room and joined Bette on the other side of the sofa.
Tina: Okay, so what is it that upset you when I said that I loved Angie?
Bette: We were talking about the divorce being hard on Angie. One thing that is hard on Angie is that her visits with you are not frequent. The other thing that is hard on Angie is that since you do not live under the same roof, she does not know you very well. She does not know where your boundaries are with respect to her or to anything for that matter. She is not with you on a day-to-day basis. She does not know what makes you happy and what will piss you off. So being with you is very much like dating without the romantic element. It’s a parent child relationship when you don’t know your parent that well.
Tina: Bette we have only been divorced for two years.
Bette: And we had a year of separation prior to that. At the time you left, Angie was thirteen years old. She has now lived three years without you in the household. That’s almost twenty percent of her life and it’s the most recent twenty percent. It’s the years in which she has been growing from a child into an adult. Physically, it is the years she is developing into a woman. And even though she loves you with all her heart and I know that you love her, her most dominate memory and understanding of you is that you love her but you left. And that, my dear Tina, shapes her relationship with you. And even though, I wish it were not so, I am afraid that there is nothing that will ever erase that.
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It is a challenging task to take on the Generation Q nonsensical plot line, especially Bette and Tina ever having gotten divorced. You have written an interesting “moment in time” offering the readers one possibility of what happened. I would imagine from your description that the cabin is a small claustrophobic place and Bette and Tina are both nervous and somewhat kinetic in the way they interact with one another and move about. Neither able to relax. Trying to respect each other and each other’s space. Watching the clock. Watching the snow. With nowhere to go. Also, it is next to impossible to make sense of the Tina that Marja gave us. No one recognizes her. I think you have given it a very good shot. I also appreciate the way you wrote Bette struggling with her emotions and all of the hurt. Tina is a mystery. Why would she ask Bette if she loves her? Bette’s reply is spot on. She loves Tina but no longer knows her. She loves her because she is Angie’s biological mother. She was able to remain respectful to Tina but also get to the heart of the matter: Why did you leave me? Why did you leave Angie? That’s tough stuff. It would have been much easier to write a story that pretended away the fiasco that was Gen Q. You took it on. Well done, Martha.
Billy,
Thank you for reading and commenting. Gen Q, for me, simply decided Bette and Tina were divorced and never fleshed out why that happened. IMO, the writers never believed that they would need this backstory when they put it into the script. But for a couple as iconic as Bette and Tina, they should have known that sooner or later, they might have to reveal that backstory. But in true Gen Q fashion, it never was addressed.
So when Laurel returned for Season 1, the writers have Tina give an explanation to Angie that she needed to find herself. And then another explanation to Bette which said that Bette simply overshadowed her very existence. Neither explanation rang true for me. And I accepted Bette’s declaration to Shane under the influence of marijuana, that she did not know why Tina left and that Tina had never offered an explanation. So, when they brought in Carrie, I was even more confused as to why Tina left and who Tina Kennard was. And despite some of the fan’s responses of adoration for Carrie, that relationship simply did not reflect the Tina Kennard I so adore and love. And then in Season 3, where we get our reunion and wedding which I desperately wanted, but the path seemed more like a fairey tale than anything which could be close to reality or reasonable. The conflicts were between Bette and Tina seemed artificial and were put aside with a few soft words. Determining what the conflicts were required the most vivid of imaginations and the ability to take the darkest moments of their past and project it to their present. Bette and Tina have a long and rocky history. But the Bette and Tina I know would never dig into that bag of history and use their bad behavior as a club to justify current behavior. I feel this is particularly true for those issues which they had analyzed, apologized and forgiven the other for. Whatever the reason for Bette and Tina’s divorce, it had to be something new or something we are completely unaware of. And I do not completely explain why the separation and divorce happen, I at least ask the question. And I still believe that question can only be answered by Tina.
I am glad you mentioned the cabin. It’s a place designed for no more than 4 people as a temporary getaway. I imagine the dining table has 4 chairs in a standard square shape. The kitchen is a galley style kitchen in which it starts to get crowded with a second person. I imagine that the main purpose is to provide housing for skiers visiting the area during the winter and hikers during the summer.
Addressing this aspect of the Gen Q story is not easy. I think that getting into Tina’s mind and understanding her motivations, her thought processes, and the environment surrounding her when she made her choices is a difficult place to go. For me, the things which might explain this seem so unfathomable that I cannot make my mind go there. Things such as cheating, falling out of love, mental illness or shear boredom with the relationship simply cannot be possible in my world for these two. And they are far too intelligent to allow a misunderstanding to keep them apart. Bette and Tina have been through too much and have weathered too many storms to believe they would ever purposely pursue a path that would destroy their relationship. I also believe that it is simply not possible for the two of them to make any decision in which they did not consider the impact of such on the other. They simply love each other too much for that. So, the bottom line is that we the writers are left to try to explain the unexplainable….
My thanks for your continued support….
Well thought out and literate reply. I totally agree.