Paternity

[PrivateTim]

 This is the disjunction between how people identify and how the demographic data is reported. The vast majority of these individuals chose "Some Other Race" because they consider their *race* to be "Hispanic." But among the official categories—if "Some Other Race" were not an option—a significant number of them are almost certainly "White."

 

So while it is true that the population in LA that *identifies* as white is a minority (it's 49.8% in the 2010 Census, but most estimates for 2011 or 2012 have the 48% figure Private Tim gave), the number of people in LA who are racially white (in the sense of being predominantly Caucasian) is really more in the vicinity of 70%.

 

It is nice you did some homework, but...... that "Some Other Race, Hispanic: 23.5" is made up of "blatinos" (black latinos) like Dominicans, Haitians, etc and Mexicans and the like who have intermarried with African Americans and another significant chunk of the "some other race Hispanics are the Mestizos which is not a choice offered by the demographers. There might be other wise "white" Hispanics who choose not to classify as "white Hispanics", but I think that would be a very small number.

 

You want to have fun with demographics, play with the LAUSD numbers; only 33% are native English speakers, only 25% are considered "fluent", 33% are "English Learners" (which means they can't understand enough of the language to learn in English) and 10% are in transition between being fluent and not. Less than 10% of the students in LAUSD are white.

[B1ue]

In interpreting these categories, it's important to remember that the US Census has the following official race categories: White, Black or African American, American Indiana or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, Some Other Race, Two or More Races. Note that none of these is "Hispanic or Latino." Hispanic origin is considered an ethnicity, not a race. But you can see that 23.5% of the LA population identified as "Some Other Race" and "Hispanic." This is the disjunction between how people identify and how the demographic data is reported. The vast majority of these individuals chose "Some Other Race" because they consider their *race* to be "Hispanic." But among the official categories—if "Some Other Race" were not an option—a significant number of them are almost certainly "White."

 

So while it is true that the population in LA that *identifies* as white is a minority (it's 49.8% in the 2010 Census, but most estimates for 2011 or 2012 have the 48% figure Private Tim gave), the number of people in LA who are racially white (in the sense of being predominantly Caucasian) is really more in the vicinity of 70%.

 

I wanted to double check before replying to this, because it was always possible my memory was faulty. But, no, the census questionaire was as I remembered it. http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf

 

Quite frankly, I would recommend taking the data from that census with a very large grain of salt, particularly in terms of Hispanic races. I doubt we'll ever have truly valid numbers for it, but ancedotal evidence suggests that many people who would never otherwise think of themselves as White, that has a great deal of their personal identity tied up in being not White (or, at least, in being Mixed White), selected White on that census as their sole race for lack of a better choice. It also, the way they set it up, discouraged those that do not identify with a particular tribe from idenitfying as Native American.

 

Again, this is only ancedotal evidence, but every member of my family, as well as every Hispanic acquainance I spoke with on this topic, struggled with that selection. One of my coworkers put "You tell me," he was so irked by the phrasing. I believe I selected White and Chinese, eventually, and would have also selected Native American had I not also had to identify a tribe.

 

For an interesting number, of those that selected "some other race," 97% also selected Hispanic. I would hypothesize that the lingering effects of the "casta" system and the Mesitzo identity within that system had a bit to do with that, but that's merely my take on it, of course.

 

Edited for grammar. I'm tired.

Edited February 16, 2013 by B1ue

[B1ue]

You want to have fun with demographics, play with the LAUSD numbers; only 33% are native English speakers, only 25% are considered "fluent", 33% are "English Learners" (which means they can't understand enough of the language to learn in English) and 10% are in transition between being fluent and not. Less than 10% of the students in LAUSD are white.

 

With the exception of a couple of schools, who would send their kids to an LAUSD school if they had any other choice?

 

And in anticipation of the question, I went to elementary school in the LAUSD. Two of my sisters got through high school, the sister that is next up in age from me got as far as middle school before she had to be pulled out, it was so bad. A teacher told her there was no point in issuing her a textbook, as she would only get pregnant and drop out anyways.

 

She was twelve.

Edited February 16, 2013 by B1ue

[methodwriter85]

Max and Father Tim?

 

I meant a main protagonist and his boyfriend/girlfriend. I can't think of any protagonist who was able to be in a committed monogamous relationship. Brad and Robbie had a 14-year run of monogamy, but then that got blown apart for Millenium. (Which is actually why I think a lot of people had a problem with that storyline, because there weren't many examples of monogamy in the world of CAP.)

 

I do think it would be interesting for Mark to go into that sometime. I remember George Michael said once that because gay men can't get married, they don't view monogamy in the same way that straight people, hence all the open relationships. But the feeling that I'm getting, especially with current twentysomethings, is that gay guys are becoming more interested in monogamy and committed relationships because of gay marriage and civil unions happening, as opposed to the way things were even a decade ago when the "circuit boi" Queer As Folk image ruled.

 

Kyle Kessler, a character from Adam Phillips's sublime Cross-Currents story, had this great monologue about how so many gay men only live for the next trick, and how he was the odd man out for actually wanting something real and lasting. That scene was set in 1998...I think things have changed, at least a little bit.

Edited February 16, 2013 by methodwriter85

[apjordan]

It is nice you did some homework, but...... that "Some Other Race, Hispanic: 23.5" is made up of "blatinos" (black latinos) like Dominicans, Haitians, etc and Mexicans and the like who have intermarried with African Americans and another significant chunk of the "some other race Hispanics are the Mestizos which is not a choice offered by the demographers. There might be other wise "white" Hispanics who choose not to classify as "white Hispanics", but I think that would be a very small number.

 

Do you have a source for this? "Black and Latino" is of course available as a race/ethnicity pair on the Census. It was chosen by 0.5% of the LA city population. Slightly more popular was "Two or More Races" and "Latino," but it was still less than 3%. I did quite a bit of searching to see whether anyone had reliable estimates for how the "Some Other Race" folks might break down, but I didn't find anything. There are a lot of stories on this topic right now, because there's a recent proposal to add "Latino" to the race category in the 2020 census. The anecdotes in those stories suggest that the folks choosing "Some Other Race" embrace the full gamut of racial backgrounds; if those stories are at all representative (which is of course hard to know for sure), then your claim that the number who are racially white "would be a very small number" is not substantiated. My suggestion of a total of 70% might be generous, but I don't think it's very far off base.

 

Here's a New York Times story that suggests there was a concerted effort to get "blatinos" to identify specifically as "Black" and "Latino." But the story doesn't indicate whether the campaign had any presence in Los Angeles.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/us/for-many-latinos-race-is-more-culture-than-color.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Since we're pretty far off the actual topic of this thread, I probably won't write more.

[B1ue]

I meant a main protagonist and his boyfriend/girlfriend. I can't think of any protagonist who was able to be in a committed monogamous relationship. Brad and Robbie had a 14-year run of monogamy, but then that got blown apart for Millenium. (Which is actually why I think a lot of people had a problem with that storyline, because there weren't many examples of monogamy in the world of CAP.)

 

I remember discussions on this topic before, but to reiterate what I think my points were (and if I'm wrong, I'm going to pretend I said this at the time) monogomy might be great in real life but it makes for a fairly boring soap opera.

 

This is just not going to be a way in which this saga holds a mirror up to life. Brad and Robbie have not been the only monogamous couple broken up by becoming story-leads and secondaries. Stef and Greg went through the same thing. Even if Stef didn't know the details until after his death, it was still driving the early plot of "If It Fits."

[methodwriter85]

Good point. See, that's the reason why I'm hoping Mark holds off on giving Will a "forever" love, because if he does that, Will either has to go off into the sunset with his happily ever after and not really be used again, or Mark has to blow up that happily ever after for the next story, which could then really irritate and alienate fans. It might work better if he has both Will and JJ (and John) playing the field in their 20's instead of settling down into partnerships.

 

Of course, I realize that I probably contradicted myself, but eh. It'd be nice to see monogamy, but I also get why we probably won't ever see it. It's a soap. "Happily ever after" means a write-off for the characters, not something sustainable.

 

Of course, this would be different if Mark plans on ending the story sometime when the Will/JJ/John trifecta reach their early/mid-20's in the mid/late 2000's, but I'm starting to get the distinct feeling that we'll be following Riley's adventures as a teenager in the 2010s when it's 2035, and Mark's going to be writing this from his retirement home while I'm planning out my 50th birthday American road trip, and Private Tim is gearing up for his 58th birthday.

Edited February 16, 2013 by methodwriter85

[PrivateTim]

 if those stories are at all representative (which is of course hard to know for sure), then your claim that the number who are racially white "would be a very small number" is not substantiated. My suggestion of a total of 70% might be generous, but I don't think it's very far off base.

 

I would politely suggest that anyone who thinks Los Angeles is 70% white or anything close to it has never been to Los Angeles or only visited Hancock Park and closed their eyes on the entire drive from LAX.

[apjordan]

I would politely suggest that anyone who thinks Los Angeles is 70% white or anything close to it has never been to Los Angeles or only visited Hancock Park and closed their eyes on the entire drive from LAX.

 

 

I've been to LA twice, and for long enough to observe that it's a racially diverse city, but that's really not at all relevant here. We aren't discussing your perceptions of LA, or mine, or anyone else's. We're discussing the city's actual demographic makeup.

 

The Census data (at least in the source that I'm using, which is here) doesn't provide a deep enough set of crosstabs for us to work this out very precisely. But we can see unambiguously that 28.7% of the population is "White, not Hispanic." We can also see that 31.9% of the population specifically indicated Mexican origin (the Census asks those identifying a Hispanic ethnicity to further indicate whether they are Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, or Other).

 

No less an authority than you informed us that Mexicans are white:

 

Ummm, Persians and Arabs are white, just like Mexicans.

 

From these two categories alone (which are mutually exclusive), LA has a white population of 60.6%, and this doesn't count people who identified as "White, Hispanic" but aren't Mexican and people who identified as "Some Other Race, Hispanic," aren't Mexican, but are racially white. These two groups are small (although the first could potentially be on the order of 10%—we can't get a more accurate figure without the crosstabs). So I'll again acknowledge that my original 70% is probably generous, but it's not off by that much. If you have data to suggest otherwise, I'd love to read it. But otherwise, I don't think there's any point to continuing this conversation.

[Mark Arbour]

I meant a main protagonist and his boyfriend/girlfriend. I can't think of any protagonist who was able to be in a committed monogamous relationship. Brad and Robbie had a 14-year run of monogamy, but then that got blown apart for Millenium. (Which is actually why I think a lot of people had a problem with that storyline, because there weren't many examples of monogamy in the world of CAP.)

 

Two thoughts:

 

1.  So your idea of a committed monogamous relationship is one that is perfect, with no affairs or peccadilloes?  As B1ue noted, that makes for boring soap opera material, and I'm not sure that, given the world these guys live in and the challenges they deal with, it's all that realistic. 

 

2.  A lot of people had a problem with the storyline for Millennium?  If I were being a smartass, I'd point out that it won the Reader's Choice Award for Best Story that year, so clearly not all that many people had problems with the storyline.    

 

One comment: 

 

I think that relationships in general are a challenge.  That's not to say that they're not rewarding, or that they can be, but they are a challenge.  With Millennium, I was trying to capture the gay version of that classic heterosexual conundrum:  the guy hits his mid-life crisis and dumps his loyal wife for a young, hot chick.  In this story, we've seen that the challenges to Brad and Robbie's relationship haven't gone away, but they have, I think, grown as a couple.  This time around, when they were driven apart, they both found sexual solace elsewhere.  I hope that throughout each chapter, readers got the feel that there really wasn't a risk of them breaking up.  Yes, they were pissed, and yes, they threw their tantrums, and yes, Brad tossed Robbie out of the house, but I tried to convey a more mature relationship theme here, where they knew they were fighting and that things were ugly, but whether they ultimately stayed together or not wasn't the big question. I think that's why, after Will drug Robbie back into Brad's room on Christmas Eve, they were able to reunite without a long, drawn-out process as happened in Millennium.  So are Brad and Robbie exclusively monogamous?  No, not exclusively.  But we really haven't seen them hooking up with Cody or Kevin too much, and I think that they're pretty damn close to the real deal, as far as that goes.

[centexhairysub]

Okay, I am going to step lightly into the issue of the racial makeup of LA... 

 

I have been looking at the American Community Survey from 2005 to 2009; this is the last five year grouping released.  I actually like it better for getting accurate takes on the breakdown better than the official US census which a lot of people avoid because of legal issues when they can.  Because of how the American Community Survey is handled and the way the information is gathered; I believe it represents and gets a more realistic view of the actual population.  While the American Community Survey is actually funded and developed by the U.S. Government, the fact it is mailed out to set addresses and is much easier and shorter than the actual US Census Survey, the results tend to be more telling.

 

The American Community Survey showed that whites made up 29.4% of the Los Angeles population while hispanics that identified primarily as white made up 20.9%, this gives a total of 50.4% white or hispanics that consider themselves primarily white.  This means that the survey found that through 2009 " whites " were a bare majority of the population.  The early data from the current survey shows that those numbers will shrink several points below 50%.

 

I am not sure why this thread got quite so heated.  It seems that several people are almost pointing fingers and accusing others of being racist or harboring racist ideas because of our refusal to agree on the challenges that Darius will face after 9/11.  I have consistently stated that while Darius may face some questios and issues; I just don't see it being to or rising to the level that others believe he will be subjected to.  Am I right or will those with the opposite view be right; we just don't know yet because Mark hasn't written that story yet....  Until he does, get over it.....

[JimCarter]

What the hell has the racial makeup of LA have to do with this story.  I think I am speaking for more than just myself when I suggest you take this crap to some other  thread.  I only come to this thread for comments about the story and I am really tired of seeing all this racial crap.  

 

Sorry, but I have just had enough of this off topic stuff.  We seem to do it a lot, but this has gotten out of hand.

[centexhairysub]

Well, the newest chapter is up and I just knew that they did not have anything to do with the coach's death.  You go the whole chapter thinking maybe they did but then you find out their plan hadn't gone into action yet...  Whether this was really an accident, a suicide, an act of god, or someone else beat them to it; it was justice in the end...  The older son's behaviour suggest he either has already suffered abuse at the hands of his father or was being groomed in that direction.  Maybe David realized what was happening; I am sure he is smart enough to have arranged something.

 

JJ reaching out to Will was really interesting.  Even though Will was the one to find him, JJ reached out because he seemed to believe that Will would validate his actions and support him against Brad and Robbie.  Will was able to point out that others finding out might have reprecussions for JJ's skating career.  Even with the coach's death, the skating seems to still be JJ's main concern.  I did find it was telling that JJ knew about the others but still felt the coach loved him more, have to wonder what the other's thought. 

 

Will was faced with the reality of the decision to remove the coach and found the world black and white and that they should have stayed their hand.  What he will have to learn is that the world has a million shades of grey and those that aren't able to view them are inevitably doomed to misery.  No one can live in a true black and white reality and survive much less thrive.

[MJ85]

1.  So your idea of a committed monogamous relationship is one that is perfect, with no affairs or peccadilloes?  As B1ue noted, that makes for boring soap opera material, and I'm not sure that, given the world these guys live in and the challenges they deal with, it's all that realistic.

 

A monogamous relationship, boring? Only if you really want it to be. There's still plenty of ways to make such a relationship "not perfect", though.

 

This time around, when they were driven apart, they both found sexual solace elsewhere.  I hope that throughout each chapter, readers got the feel that there really wasn't a risk of them breaking up.  Yes, they were pissed, and yes, they threw their tantrums, and yes, Brad tossed Robbie out of the house, but I tried to convey a more mature relationship theme here, where they knew they were fighting and that things were ugly, but whether they ultimately stayed together or not wasn't the big question. I think that's why, after Will drug Robbie back into Brad's room on Christmas Eve, they were able to reunite without a long, drawn-out process as happened in Millennium.

 

I'm not so sure that you quite succeeded in the sense of there never being a risk of them breaking up. I think it was definitely there throughout a good chunk of December prior to Christmas. The "X"-Factor in there, so to speak, was that there wasn't really a sense of Robbie reaching a point of turning around, and working on making up with Brad. Not up until Christmas happened, anyway.

 

Lastly...this thing with JJ might be your darkest storyline yet, Mark.

 

EDIT: I also kind of figured that people were jumping to conclusions on the coach's death being a killing. Maybe it just seemed like too obvious a thing with so many making that assumption, but...an accident like that seems like a pretty elaborate plan for a death with those specifications.

Edited February 16, 2013 by MJ85

[Mark Arbour]

Well, the newest chapter is up and I just knew that they did not have anything to do with the coach's death.  You go the whole chapter thinking maybe they did but then you find out their plan hadn't gone into action yet...  Whether this was really an accident, a suicide, an act of god, or someone else beat them to it; it was justice in the end...  The older son's behaviour suggest he either has already suffered abuse at the hands of his father or was being groomed in that direction.  Maybe David realized what was happening; I am sure he is smart enough to have arranged something.

 

JJ reaching out to Will was really interesting.  Even though Will was the one to find him, JJ reached out because he seemed to believe that Will would validate his actions and support him against Brad and Robbie.  Will was able to point out that others finding out might have reprecussions for JJ's skating career.  Even with the coach's death, the skating seems to still be JJ's main concern.  I did find it was telling that JJ knew about the others but still felt the coach loved him more, have to wonder what the other's thought. 

 

Will was faced with the reality of the decision to remove the coach and found the world black and white and that they should have stayed their hand.  What he will have to learn is that the world has a million shades of grey and those that aren't able to view them are inevitably doomed to misery.  No one can live in a true black and white reality and survive much less thrive.

 

I'll bet the coach told that to all the skaters (that he loved them more) in order to better manipulate them.  If they're fighting for his attention and love, and it gets really competitive (in an already-competitive group), it seems to me that they'd be willing to do whatever he wanted to get his love and attention.  

 

I can see that at a time like this, JJ would reach toward things that are important to him, comfortable to him, and define him. I think that skating falls into all of those categories, so I'd expect him to latch onto that in the same way that a drowning man grabs a life preserver.  

[methodwriter85]

       I really liked you bringing up "cutting" into this. "Cutting" was very of the time, to the point that at least two t.v. shows did episodes about this issue. I had friends in middle school and high school in the late 90's/early '00s who were cutters, and I think JJ is pretty strong candidate to get into that. Cutters are usually people who are in a lot of pain, but can't verbally express it, so they harm themselves instead. I tried cutting myself when I was 11 or 12, but I couldn't do it. My self-harm method was instead occasional bouts with binging and purging from 11 to 18.

 

       I also loved how JJ just can't really see what love is- he repeatedly goes on about how he loves his coach because he was going to take him to the Olympics, but nothing else about what made the coach so damned loveable. The line about how JJ's coach may have loved other boys but he loved him the best also spoke volumes. I think in a couple of years, when JJ's 17 or so, it'd be interesting to look at how he recovers from this and realizes what actual love is.

     Will's reaction to this has been pretty in-character, I thought. He believes in black and white, and what they set up definitely fell into "black". It was nice differentiation from Brad and Will.

 

      My final thought...the family was so concentrated on all of Will's big yelling and acting out; that they failed to see what was going on with JJ, who was the quiet, obedient one. That seemed like a very true-to-life family dynamic, where the family assumes that the quiet one who isn't breaking rules is okay while they wring their hands over the rebellious ones. I know Mark only has one sibling and one child, so I'm really impressed at how well he's been writing the dyanmic of when you have at least 3 siblings.

Edited February 17, 2013 by methodwriter85

[PrivateTim]

Well, the newest chapter is up and I just knew that they did not have anything to do with the coach's death.  You go the whole chapter thinking maybe they did but then you find out their plan hadn't gone into action yet...  Whether this was really an accident, a suicide, an act of god, or someone else beat them to it; it was justice in the end...  The older son's behaviour suggest he either has already suffered abuse at the hands of his father or was being groomed in that direction.  Maybe David realized what was happening; I am sure he is smart enough to have arranged something.

 

JJ reaching out to Will was really interesting.  Even though Will was the one to find him, JJ reached out because he seemed to believe that Will would validate his actions and support him against Brad and Robbie.  Will was able to point out that others finding out might have reprecussions for JJ's skating career.  Even with the coach's death, the skating seems to still be JJ's main concern.  I did find it was telling that JJ knew about the others but still felt the coach loved him more, have to wonder what the other's thought. 

 

Will was faced with the reality of the decision to remove the coach and found the world black and white and that they should have stayed their hand.  What he will have to learn is that the world has a million shades of grey and those that aren't able to view them are inevitably doomed to misery.  No one can live in a true black and white reality and survive much less thrive.

 

I think one of the keys for an abuser is to find kids who don't feel special and make them feel special, "you're my favorite", "you are special" and so on. Even if they know there are others, they get reassured "they are the ONE". In some cases there are group activities with the "special group" and they all know they are "special", but one one they get assured that they are the favorite.

 

I can't see David being involved, but does anyone know where Shane Jackson's mom was??

[Mark Arbour]

      My final thought...the family was so concentrated on all of Will's big yelling and acting out; that they failed to see what was going on with JJ, who was the quiet, obedient one. That seemed like a very true-to-life family dynamic, where the family assumes that the quiet one who isn't breaking rules is okay while they wring their hands over the rebellious ones. I know Mark only has one sibling and one child, so I'm really impressed at how well he's been writing the dyanmic of when you have at least 3 siblings.

 

I think I understand what you're saying here, but your words aren't really resonating.  JJ hasn't been quiet and obedient, he's been incredibly bitchy and obnoxious.  

[methodwriter85]

Okay. Not so much on the quiet, but still JJ hasn't really been doing much to break the rules. Compared to Will setting his parents clothes on fire and running off to Hawaii, JJ has been pretty obedient. Bitchy, but not rebellious. No one really cared to look at JJ during that period except for Tiffany, and it wasn't until Will stabilized that JP realized that something was up with him.

Edited February 17, 2013 by methodwriter85

[mmike1969]

Bitchy and obnoxious... Yeah that sounds like most teenagers nowadays

[Mark Arbour]

Okay. Not so much on the quiet, but still JJ hasn't really been doing much to break the rules. Compared to Will setting his parents clothes on fire and running off to Hawaii, JJ has been pretty obedient. Bitchy, but not rebellious. No one really cared to look at JJ during that period except for Tiffany, and it wasn't until Will stabilized that JP realized that something was up with him.

 

In their own ways, they both are quite capable of making those who annoy them miserable.  But JJ isn't going to rebel like Will, because as we've noted, he's conditioned to tow the line.  He's going to ultimately yield to authority.  Will is an independent free spirit type, where authority is something that should be questioned.  

[methodwriter85]

Will is an independent free spirit type, where authority is something that should be questioned.  

 

I thought you did a fine job of displaying that, in a teenaged way, in the chapter where Will goes to his first Menlo party. He initially tried to fit in with his Abercrombie outfit into Carter's crowd, but ultimately didn't see much point in trying to get a bunch of assholes to like him, even if it might cost him popularity points. Will rejected the social authority of Carter, because he didn't think the popularity it might afford him to suck up to Carter was worth it.

 

We can't know what Brad was like at 14, but at 17 we knew that fitting in and having the power that being top of social heap afforded him was pretty important. It's not hard to extrapolate from how Brad was senior year to imagine that when Brad was a freshman, he likely kept his mouth shut to the popular upperclassmen about things they did that pissed him off, because Brad didn't want to alienate them, because popularity was important to him. It's not really that way with Will, and you're doing a good job of showing that.

[rjo]

My last response disappeared so I will try to recreate it. Will is the loud one. He ruins cars, clothes, and runs away. JJ is the silent screamer, His cries for help are dismissed as bitchiness. Will finially got his safe foundation and is transformed. Only then could the family see JJ's problems. Michaels pictures showed them what they had over looked. Then it was Will's quick mind and fast actions that saved his brother from bleeding to death. It is easy for JJ to be over looked. He was the middle boy. Darius with a natural charm and coolness. Will as Brad's favorate. That left JJ with Jeanine. The only thing JJ had was skating. Without it he had nothing set him apart, to make him special. JJ short not mature was often overlooked and overshadowed by his two more out going brothers.  All of it fits. His coach tells him he loves him more than all the others. A perfect trap which JJ feel into. So what happens now? JJ needs to know he is loved, not the love which the coach gave him, but the real love  which his family can give him. Again Will is the one to do that. Hopefully, with a lot of help JJ can recover. I think he can because underneath it all he has a same tuffness which Will has.

Edited February 17, 2013 by rjo

[MJ85]

I don't agree that Will is "the" one to show JJ what love is. Not all by himself. I just don't get a vibe that it would be something, or even should be something, that is to be done by one member of the family. That's imposing a lot of importance on the one person. And in any case, yes Will and JJ had a Christmas moment, yes Will called for help, but there's still the lingering effect of their having grown apart. I have to think it'll come up at some point.

 

I guess, if nothing else...why should it be just one member of the family who shows JJ what real love is, anyway?

[rjo]

You are correct, all the members of this family will have to help and I am sure they will, but Will had to be the first, Why? Because Will and JJ hadn't got along for such a long time. JJ needs to know that this is real, not just someone going through the motions. When Will said to JJ that he loved him it meant something. It gave JJ hope. It will be a long road and the sad thing is that JJ can't confront the coach, not like Wade and his father did. It has taken Wade many years to rebuild that relationship. It will take JJ even longer. Surrounded will his family he can do it.