User blog:Eikakou/Anne (CBC series) season 2, episode 9 - What We Have Been Makes Us What We Are review

Oh, feeling a bit wonky and tired these past two days. But, I'm here with at least one review for the series!

CBC aired episodes 9 and 10 back-to-back, so I'm going to make separate posts. It was probably a good move to air them both, but oh noes, this episode was full of ouch.

SPOILERS AHEAD.' (And they were of the painful variety)

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Avonlea has a new teacher! She decorates her house with potato stamps, she rides a motorbike, and she wears trousers! And wow, is she loquacious. In fact, she's just like an older version of Anne, it seems. While Anne is absolutely delighted with Miss Stacy and how modern she seems, not everyone seems to agree. The Progressive Mothers of Avonlea (the group run by Mrs. Andrews) are very unimpressed by Miss Stacy showing up late to their meeting and being completely unkempt. Rachel Lynde seems to think that a female teacher is entirely unsuitable for shaping the young minds of Avonlea because... Miss Stacy is an unmarried woman of childbearing age... who wants a career? Scandalous! Rachel ropes Marilla into going to see Miss Stacy, apparently because Marilla is a parent with a child currently at school, and therefore has something at stake. Rachel is even less impressed than the Progressive Mothers, immediately calling Miss Stacy out on all sorts of things based merely on assumptions without actually trying to get to know Miss Stacy. Marilla is extremely unhappy with Rachel's behavior, given that most of Rachel's accusations (that Miss Stacy is unmarried and unfulfilled and overcompensating for not ever landing a man and having kids) could easily apply to Marilla. It's frustrating to watch, because the audience knows, for example, that Miss Stacy is actually widowed and she doesn't bother to correct Rachel because it seems that she's already aware that Rachel's mind is made up about what sort of person she is.

The students of Avonlea have a mixed reaction towards Miss Stacy. The girls point out that Miss Stacy is a spinster, an outsider from the mainland, and doesn't wear a corset. That jerkface Billy Andrews calls the new teacher "little lady" while flaunting his hunting rifle. Miss Stacy doesn't have any of that disrespect. At first, things seem great, if not very unconventional. She wants them all to be able to express themselves and involve themselves in learning. But Anne makes a horrible first impression - she's too overly eager to share information about everyone else. Miss Stacy sees it for what it is - gossip - while Anne thinks she's being helpful by telling Miss Stacy everything, even if it's open secret (like Prissy ditching her wedding and Gilbert's travels abroad), but she doesn't realize how insensitive she's being towards everyone else. Gilbert proves to be one of the students receptive to Miss Stacy and is happy when Miss Stacy is willing to help with some extra tutoring so he can progress with his future medical studies. Anne, unhappily, is assigned an essay on the perils of gossip and now she's feeling frustrated that Gilbert knows what he's going to do in life and he's getting way ahead of her while she's fumbling around.

If Anne making a poor first impression on Miss Stacy wasn't enough to upset her, she's also upset that people are now after her fox friend (with jerkface Billy being especially determined to shoot the fox). Cole tries to make her feel better during a trip to the beach ("COME TO ME MUSE!"), but then Matthew and Jerry set up a trap for the Green Gables chicken coop, and Anne can't convince Matthew to take the trap away. She spends entire night worrying about the fox instead of working on her essay and accidentally burns it in the morning (and Miss Stacy wants her to write it again). It does give Marilla an opportunity to witness Miss Stacy's teaching in action though. It's a lesson on electricity and a nice potato battery - things that a lot of the kids (and maybe the Avonlea residents) have never seen or heard of before. But when the Progressive Mothers pop by, accident-prone Moody picks up the charged battery, shocks himself, and drops the light bulb, which adds more black marks for Miss Stacy in everyone's books, except for Marilla. The trip home seems to a single bright spot - Anne, desperate to help her fox, brings Miss Stacy and Marilla to the story club's little shack and asks if Miss Stacy can help Cole, who hasn't been attending school because of all the bullying.

Meanwhile, Bash is experiencing his own frustration at trying to run the farm alone as Gilbert speeds on wildly ahead with his studies. Bash finds that even fixing a fence is impossible on his own and when he asks Gil to help out, Gilbert brushes him off. When Bash learns that Gil is breaking their agreement (to take care of the farm for two years so that Bash can learn to farm) in exchange for accelerating his studies, they argue. Bash winds up at the Bog when he loses control of the horse he can barely ride and ends up spending his time with Mary instead, and he expresses some serious thoughts about marrying Mary. While Gilbert is shocked to get home and find he's alone, Bash finds his cozy relationship with Mary suddenly upset by a man appearing at Mary's house, someone that she cares about a lot, and Bash takes off before she can explain.

Back in Avonlea, it's a bad day for everyone. Jerkface Billy Andrews and his friends destroy the story club's shack during their hunt for the fox. Matthew won't take away the fox trap. Miss Stacy tries to help Cole, but only succeeds at revealing to his parents that he has been skipping school - and if he's not going to school anymore, he is expected to be on the farm. Cole knows immediately that Anne is the reason why Miss Stacy visited and they get into a fight, because he feels that Anne's betrayed him and doomed him to a life on the farm. A dejected Miss Stacy arrives at school, but misses the arrival of Cole, who finally starts beating up Billy for his hateful bullying. But the fight ends when Billy's ear hits the burning hot stove and Cole takes off. Miss Stacy knows her days in Avonlea are numbered.

So, this was the episode where everything bad happens. While so much of Anne and Miss Stacy's interactions had me cringing, I actually approve of how Miss Stacy was trying to be fair to everyone and letting them all have a chance to speak for themselves. I also liked how she insisted that Anne write her destroyed essay again because, yes, Anne has proven that she can talk non-stop without thinking things through, but writing will force her to slow down and think critically. I was admittedly dubious about how Miss Stacy comes across as an older version of Anne in the opening scene, but it shows later that she's a mature individual who is fully aware of herself. I also really liked the developments between Mary and Bash, though I'm finding that wow, did their relationship move fast. Mary's a great character to watch - she's pragmatic and thoughtful and honest. (And while it was a horrible thing to happen, I hate Billy Andrews for his misogynistic, bullying, destructive lack of respect for anything and he deserved to be beaten up, and the only reason I hated the stove burn was because everyone around him will care more that he was injured than trying to figure out why he deserved to be beaten up.)

More to come with the season finale! (Just needed this one out of my system, it was a doozy of the episode.)

Eikakou (talk) 02:32, November 21, 2018 (UTC)