“This is life and death for me. You not down with that, you shouldn’t even start.” -Ed Romeo
The gift of Ed Romeo was given to us this episode. Ed adds a much needed outside influence to the training of Patrick Leary. The relationships within his family are pretty much set where they are until the fight, so what sense would it have made just to watch things play out predictably. With the addition of Romeo, the stakes are raised as now Patrick is having to make a choice, again, between fighting and family. Only this time, it’s not Teresa, it’s Johnny, Margaret and his father.
I’m not a fan of ultimatums at all, especially in relationships. It seems like Lights has to dance around an awful lot of them with his family. First with Teresa, it was her or the fighting, and Patrick chose her. Then it was his father. It was either he trains his way and takes other fights or he walks as his trainer. Patrick chose fighting. Now with Romeo, he asks him to shut out Johnny, Margaret and his father as their negative influences in his life and he needs to have zero distractions on the way to becoming a champion again. This time, Lights is choosing both. This could be Lights’s most difficult battle yet. We continually see the separation be Lights the fighter and Patrick of the Leary family, but it’s always stayed in the family. Now what happens when Lights the fighter leaves the family?
I’m not going to put Johnny and Margaret on sycophants yet, but they are getting close. It’s clear that they love their brother Patrick very much and that they’re proud of him. It’s also clear that they really love being related to a former heavyweight champion. They feel like it’s partly their championship and that they get to reap the rewards as well. So when Romeo comes in and upsets that balance, it’s not a wonder why they clamor and try and get Lights to keep it in house. Their golden goose is escaping from the farm. They need to realize that Lights isn’t like other people. He is going to stick with his family, out of love and not out of obligation, as Romeo said.
Patrick dealt with every member of his family in this episode. Except for the youngest daughter, who is inexplicably absent from many episodes. It wouldn’t be so obvious if they didn’t draw attention to it every episode. This week, the shaky reasoning is that she’s at a girl scout function. In his dealings with his family members, one word comes to mind to describe Patrick: commitment. In dealing with his father, he has a commitment to fighting Reynolds and so he was forced to recruit Ed. Then when pops tried to rehire himself, he stuck with his commitment to Ed. He’s always been committed to Teresa, and it’s because of this commitment we are where we are. But Patrick owns his mistakes. When his family warns him of his potential for making a big mistake, he’s “well then I’ll make it then.” He has his own idea and he sticks with it. He has a commitment to see his daughters happy. As much as I don’t care about the daughters story line, it was a very nice moment to see Patrick react to Ava coming down the stairs. You could see the pride in his eyes. He wishes Ava well in her future decisions, but it’s clear he’s happy for her in that moment. His sister, Margaret, who’s been his biggest fan since day one, has been living off the commitment he made to her. He gave her he diner and eats there what seems like every meal. He brought Johnny back in the loop. Even with everything Johnny did to him, he still welcomes him back. All this to say that the potential schism between Patrick and his family caused by Ed Romeo has some serious ramifications. I’m not so sure Lights can have his cake and eat it too. Something has to give, but what?
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