I posted this over on Tumblr last night, but figured I'd also post it here.




”It’s been a bad day in a bad week.”

One of my favorite underrated scenes in season 2 is this one in 2x02 with Ward and his S2-era assistant, Katie.

She appears in only one scene and is briefly mentioned in another episode. And yet, I feel that for having such a tiny amount of screentime in the show, there’s a lot of presence packed into those few minutes of canon.

I feel like that scene with her and Ward is really significant for him (and both of them, really) because one of Ward’s big things this season is learning to be less self-absorbed, but for the most part this takes place through his relationships with various people who are important enough to him to make him break out of his patterns of (mis)behavior because he doesn’t want to lose them. But the thing about Katie is, she’s not that important in a close-personal-ties kind of way. She’s not his sibling or his lover or even a friend-of-family the way Misty is.

So that scene where he apologizes to her and walks back from his mistreatment of her is really meaningful in his character development. It’s the only time this season and maybe the only time ever that we see him going out of his way and making the conscious decision to intentionally not be a dick when he doesn’t have to. (I’m not saying he’s always a dick otherwise. Actually, season 1 Ward is usually fairly polite to people when he’s not otherwise angry/annoyed. I don’t think he goes out of his way to be a jerk to people – it’s just that he doesn’t care enough not to be, and in season 2, we don’t see much of his interaction with people outside his immediate circle of family and his NA group.)

But the thing about that scene with Katie is that he realizes what he’s doing – taking out his emotional upset/anger/pain with the Joy situation on her – and walks it back and apologizes, and then goes out of his way to let her know that he respects and values her opinion. And that’s important!

And the other thing I like about that scene is that she really seems to like him – which is especially significant later on, the other time in the season when she’s mentioned, in the episode where he gets drunk in the bar, because it’s Katie who figures out that something’s wrong and calls Bethany … which means Katie a) knows he’s a recovering addict, b) knows how to get in touch with his sponsor, and c) cares enough to do it even though he’s probably not going to like it and she could get in trouble for it.

Ward needs more people in his life that he’s friendly with on a casual basis. People who like him, and who he likes, without actually being extremely close or emotionally tangled up in the way he is with Joy or Danny or Bethany.

(… also, the fact that Ward’s assistant has a business degree and is clearly a full-fledged professional in her own right in season 2 makes me feel even worse for poor put-upon Megan in season 1, because presumably she was too, unless Rand was such a total clusterfuck at that point that their professional standards have come up by season 2. (Entirely possible.) Still, I hope Megan got a glowing recommendation and is currently having a very nice life somewhere that Ward is not.)