The Tides – Living Room
Dinah Lee tells Trucker that she needs him to do something for her. “I don’t know if it’s going to make things harder or easier,” she confesses. He says he’ll do anything. “Make love to me,” she replies. “I want to hold you, I want to be close to you, just once, just for tonight.”
Hospital – ICU Room/Heaven
Kate, Jeremy, Angie, and Charles are on hand to watch Alex try to marry a comatose Ava. Meanwhile, on heaven’s balcony, Harry urges Ava to stop watching so that they can get on with crossing over. “Don’t tell me you still want to go back,” he says, citing all the horrible events that he showed her would be happening in Corinth in the year to come.
Back in ICU, Alex begs Ava to come to and say “I do.”
Harry urges Ava to consider what she’d be giving up by going back, but she wants to be with Alex. And, hey, if she can make it to heaven now, after all of the shit she’s done, then there’s no reason she can’t make it back later, right? Might as well live a little more first.
The Tides – Living Room
Trucker tells Dinah Lee that it wouldn’t be right for them to have sex, but she disagrees. He doesn’t put up much of a fight and they start kissing.
Hospital – ICU Room/Heaven
Alex continues to encourage Ava to come out of the coma as everyone else in the room faces the reality of the situation and its hopelessness. “Please answer me, sweetheart. Say something.”
Meanwhile, Harry encourages Ava to consider everyone else’s feelings and how sad it’s making them seeing her hold on. “Do you really want to go down to that unhappiness?” he wonders. She does, in fact, and he notices that she’s crying, which apparently no one does in the afterlife. “You’re still the blustering old bully you always were,” Ava snaps as Harry continues to push her. “And you’re still the infuriating little…” he doesn’t finish the sentence and starts chastising himself for fighting with her since they don’t fight in heaven.
“You’ve seen the misery down there,” he says. “And you’ve seen the misery that’s coming in the future. Do you remember what you saw?” he asks, for the audience’s sake. Though she acknowledges that what she saw was “awful,” she claims that she can’t remember the specifics. He doesn’t believe that and prompts her to list it all out loud. “Someone’s coming home, but I don’t remember who. A family’s going to break up, but I can’t remember why and I can’t remember what family…” “And someone in Corinth is going to die.” “Yes, Harry. Who, Harry?” He says he can’t tell her unless she decides to stay.
So, about the predictions. The emphasis above is mine because, while the first and last predictions are pretty straight forward (although the results will be maddening), the second one is so ambiguous that it’s meaning is constantly shifting (so much so that “a family’s going to break up” becomes used interchangeably with “someone is going to come into their own”) and the resolution to that one doesn’t make a ton of sense. Anyway, put a pin in that thought, because we’ll be returning to it in future episodes.
Harry decides to pull out the big guns by letting Ava experience some kind of spiritual transformation for herself. He tells her to look up and she becomes bathed in light. Transfixed, she raises her arms up.
Back in ICU, Alex continues to plead with Ava and Kate can’t take much more of it. Charles steps in to tell Alex to “ease up.” Alex asks everyone to give him some time alone with Ava and they oblige him.
Back in heaven, Ava is blissed out. Harry asks if she’s made her decision and she declares that she has.
Fade to white.
Hospital – ICU/ICU Room
Angie is broken up about what she saw and Charles tries to comfort her. “I have seen so many sad things, Charles, as a doctor and I’ve always managed to keep a certain professional distance, but right now…” He thinks this isn’t just about Alex and Ava, but about her own brush with mortality, too, and promises that he’ll be there for her whenever she needs him. She asks him to spend the night with her, but first she goes to see Kate and ask if she’s alright.
After Angie and Charles take their leave, Jeremy encourages Kate to go and get some rest. She wants to wait for Alex, but Jeremy thinks he’ll probably be a while. Jeremy brings up Sandy, who could use some company right now, and Kate agrees to leave with him.
From the other side of the window in Ava’s room, Alex watches them go and then turns back to Ava. “I’m out of ideas,” he says sadly. “I just don’t know what to do. Maybe I misread you. Maybe you want me to let you go, so you can let go.”
The Tides – Living Room
Trucker and Dinah Lee get hot and heavy on the couch, though his limited mobility makes it a bit difficult. Suddenly, she pulls away, telling him that someone is there. He says there’s no one else there, but she’s convinced that she heard something. She goes to the window to check it out, explaining that she had a feeling “that someone was here in this house, watching us.”
“Yeah, there is someone here, Dinah Lee.” “Who?” “Curtis. He’s not in the house, but, yeah, he’s still here. He’s not going away.”
The Tides – Living Room
Trucker brings up when Dinah Lee first came to Corinth. “When we were together, and I just separated from Trisha, and I felt so guilty.” Maybe that’s because you didn’t separate from Trisha until after you slept with Dinah Lee, bud.
She insists that they’re different people now than they were then. “Now you’re married, just like I was back then. And you still care for Curtis, just as I cared for Trisha.” He tells her that the guilt would be worse this time because now they’ll both feel it. “I almost feel angry at you,” she admits, telling him that it’s because he’s right. He wishes that he wasn’t. “I know that you would never do anything to hurt Curtis or anyone that needed you as much as he needs you now.”
He tells her that he’ll always love her and she thanks him “for making me see what I’ve been trying so hard not to. You’re right. I can’t leave Curtis right now. He needs me, he needs me to get better, and I can’t be there for him as a wife, but I can be there as a friend. And when he gets his strength back, his self-confidence, and all the things that Dante took from him, then he’ll be able to make it on his own and then you and I can be together, just the two of us, nobody hiding in the shadows.”
She asks if he’ll wait for her and he nods. She gives him another kiss and then leaves.
Hubbard House – Master Bedroom
Charles and Angie eat grapes and she tells him about the first date she ever had and how bad it was. She confesses to being scared, admitting that it’s not just the HIV scare. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s that at all,” she says. She goes on that she’s talked to a therapist about it, who suggested that she might be afraid of something else. She starts talking about Jesse and how hard it was to move on. “You just don’t get too involved, because you can get hurt.” He points out that they’re already involved, but she thinks that they’re talking about taking it to another level.
She tells him that watching Alex try to get through to Ava made her realize how much she herself has in Charles.
Hospital – ICU Room
Alex is beside himself, thinking that Ava is never going to come back. “It’s so hard to let somebody go. I don’t want to let you go. I know I’m being selfish, but I don’t want to let you go…” He lays his head down and sobs. Suddenly, her hand is on the back of his head. He looks at her and she begins to open her eyes, thus ending Ava’s coma after 21 episodes.
Episode Cast:
- Dinah Lee Mayberry – Jessica Collins
- Charles Harrison – Geoffrey C. Ewing
- Alex Masters – Randolph Mantooth
- Angie Hubbard – Debbi Morgan
- Ava Rescott – Lisa Peluso
- Kate Slavinsky – Nada Rowand
- Trucker McKenzie – Robert Tyler
- Nurse Becker – Edie Falco
- Father Matchett – David A. MacDonald
- Harry Sowolsky – Ed Moore
Loving (1983-1995) 