He Was The One All Along: Part 2

he was the one all along: part 2

i’m really emotional about portwell today, so why not continue this? LMAO.

here’s part 1, btw.

https://forbiddenship.tumblr.com/post/670127606035857408/he-was-the-one-all-along-part-1

sneha

he was the one all along: part 1

one of the things i love most about portwell is that when you go back and watch the show knowing what happens, you have this realization, li

disclaimer: i am not liable if anyone cries. read at your own risk. i love you all <3

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it’s actually crazy to me how literally every episode had some sort of connection or reference to or foreshadowing to ej and portwell. every day i’m more and more impressed with these writers and their storytelling.

in 2x04, ricky tells gina, “i go big. you know that.”

but the thing is, gina doesn’t know that. all she knows is the ricky that started hanging out with her after homecoming and flirting with her once he decided he wanted to move on from his ex and put himself back out there. the ricky that has always been very proactive in preserving the family the wildcats have created together, including doing his best to make sure miss jenn got to keep her job, but easily accepted that gina was moving away and resigned himself to this fact. she knows the ricky who, after she moved away, realized he still loved nini, and got back together with her even after she came back into his life. and lastly, the ricky who put their friendship on the back burner and as good as forgot about her as soon as he was in a relationship again.

gina doesn’t know that ricky is capable of “going big” - for her, at least. she’s seen him do it for nini, right from the first time she saw him and he sang “i think i kinda, you know” all the way to when he wrote a song to play for nini on valentine’s day. and even in the context they’re talking about - which is the chocolates (“i can only assume it’s your latest valentine to me”) - even that is an example of something ricky didn’t do for gina. a time that he didn’t “go big.” so when he says she must “know” that he can do that, even though it’s unintentional, for her it really translates to “you’ve seen me do this before for nini.”

in the next episode, we see gina finally confront ricky about all of his bullshit - for lack of a better term - and set her boundaries firmly. it was very satisfying to watch, after two straight episodes of him being a bad friend and making jokes about something that she was genuinely humiliated by. after the way he delivered that “obviously” so casually (but cruelly in the name of being honest. sorry i had to) when she said “we’re not dating.” it was nice to see her tell him straight up where her boundaries were.

and while that was the main takeaway from the scene, i can’t help but also notice the reason that he came to her for advice in the first place. ricky wanted to ask if gina would appreciate if he went behind her back for a good reason. basically he’s asking if she’s okay with being surprised by some sort of gesture. something that was planned without her knowing, but at the end of the day, was done for her own good. and what do you know, she says yes. that she would be flattered.

ofc ricky would never do something like this for gina. he knows it, she knows it, we know it. it’s part of why she gets so (rightfully) pissed when he comes to her asking this question. he turns it into a hypothetical between the two of them, but the truth is that he wouldn’t give her a sweet gesture, he wouldn’t go big for her, and he certainly wouldn’t do something behind her back for a good reason.

but guess who does go big for gina? who does things for her when she least expects them but most needs them? who shows up without ever having to be pushed and gives his 110%? who looks at her with the stars shining in his eyes?

ej caswell. who proves time and time again, without even trying, without even meaning to, that he can do all of the things that gina and ricky talked about, but obviously, ricky never could - even on a friendship level. all of the sweet gestures and the going big and - something i recently thought about - the “going behind her back for a good reason.”

in the fake dating scene in 2x07, we see gina having a convo with the north high guy, looking uncomfortable and unsure what to say, and in literally the next second, we see ej walk up behind her and put his arm around her. “hey babe.”

that was not something the two of them planned together. they fake dated before for homecoming, but that was a completely different situation. there was never a conversation where they sat down and established “if one of us ever needs rescuing, we will pretend to be boyfriend and girlfriend to get each other out of a difficult situation.” i mean, that would be cute, but i don’t think it happened, judging by the way gina was very surprised to see ej with his arm around her and ej kinda panicked and went “risotto!! let’s do that!!”

which means that in that split second that he saw gina standing there looking uncomfortable, ej came up with the fake dating as an idea to help her out. on his own. he didn’t ask if she was okay with it, so you could say he “went behind her back” - but for a good reason. it’s even in a literal sense, because the way they shot the scene is with ej walking up from behind gina, which is presumably where he came up with this idea.

and while we know from the fallout that ricky and nini had at slices that she didn’t appreciate him going behind her back, we know that gina, on the other hand, would be flattered by that. she’s not the same person as nini, and she doesn’t have the same love languages. to her, someone who spent the majority of her life looking out for herself, the prospect of someone looking out for her - the very idea of being “saved” - is indeed flattering. and that’s exactly what ej does for her.

i just think that’s neat.

moving to episode 2x06 now - sorry i’m going out of order - where we had the big confession scene in flashback form. even that scene had a small reference to ej. right before gina tells ashlyn about what she did on opening night, ashlyn brings up the secret understudy plan with ej. in the same episode where gina says “team wonderstudy. i got you.” the first time the wonderstudy plan was mentioned all season, actually.

it’s so personal to me how gina is basically sad and regretful and hurting in this entire scene, but the one mention of her plan with ej from last semester is enough to make her smile softly. to take her mind off ricky. much in the same way that she smiles and looks extremely relieved in the “may i have this exercise?” scene, when moments ago she was feeling flustered and slightly panicked. it’s the little things.

last, i just wanna talk about the two confession scenes. with ricky, gina knew that she was moving away, and some part of her also knew that he didn’t reciprocate her feelings - but she was okay with doing it anyways because she knew “the plane was going down.” she’s not really looking for an answer from him though. she tells him her confession, and then tells him she’s gonna hug him and walk away and that’s that. whereas with ej, she genuinely puts her heart out there by asking instead of just confessing and giving him a chance to respond.

i wanna focus on both of these boys’ responses, to these confessions though. because, even though gina phrases them very differently, the confessions do have some similarities.

with both ricky and ej, gina hesitates for a moment before making the confession. “i guess i just wanna say that- i’m sorry, this is so stupid, i don’t know why i’m crying.” to which ricky responds with “say it.” and “can i -??” to which ej responds with “can you what?”

of course, ricky looks her in the eye while ej looks away. ej was afraid of getting rejected and had no idea that she was actually going to confess, whereas ricky probably knew what was coming and, well, had just gotten back together with nini. nevertheless, i thought both of these setups for a confession were interestingly similar. until they weren’t. because after they ask her to keep going and she makes the confession, gina pauses for a second to see if they understood. and when i looked at their reactions side by side, it was like night and day.

ricky’s expression after she confesses stays basically the exact same as it was before, and he just nods. ej, however, is very confused, which is written all over his face. so gina clarifies her confession (which she never did with ricky because she wasn’t looking for him to give her a concrete answer) and again, ej’s expression changes. this time, he breaks out into a wide smile as he finally understands.

with ricky, she tells him that she’s going to hug him, and then takes the first step forward for the actual hug. but with ej, she asks if she can kiss him, and he drops his bag and takes the first step towards her. i just think it’s so cool how similar but also remarkably different the two scenes are. and how ricky’s face remains practically neutral the entire time - i can barely tell which shots are pre confession and post confession - while ej goes through a mini journey of emotions that play across his face, before he finally takes that big step forward.

i honestly don’t know what this post ended up being. i just started thinking about all the little references to ej and the foreshadowing in so many rina scenes, especially from 2A. how those scenes are not only examples of what’s wrong with rina, but also what’s right with portwell. it’s genuinely so beautiful to me. the writers knew what they were doing.

can somebody teach me how to use tumblr? please and thank you

S02E06 | S02E08

S01E05 | S02E11 | S01E09

the feminine urge to gather everyone from the portwell nation to invade Twitter and take over #that fandom

#couldnthavesaiditbetter

#preach

What do you think was the whole point of the Rina flashback scene? I have seen some R*na shippers get mad that they showed a Rina flashback and we never saw them talk to each other again and they are out here claiming that the showed the flashback because they think this means R*na is the endgame. I think the whole point was to show that asked her for relationship advice on his current girlfriend after she told him that she likes him.

I think the flashback served several purposes, and none of them have anything to do with R*na being the endgame. If anything, this scene proved the opposite.

Its main purpose was to reveal that Gina hadn't kept her feelings hidden this whole time, but that she'd actually confessed to Ricky on opening night. Which put all the awkwardness between them in 2A in a new context and told us that Ricky was aware of her feelings this whole time, but didn't feel compelled to act on that because he doesn't feel the same way about her. Just compare how he just gave a whole speech to Nini about why he loves her and him only stopping to talk because she told him to just kiss her, to him only saying "Say it" when he knew what Gina was about to say and then giving her the hug she asked for but doing nothing else.

The flashback scene helps us understand why Ricky was trying to see how Gina responded to seeing him with Nini in 2x01 and why he looked slightly tense and hesitant when Gina said this in 2x03 (on top of the entire scene already being pretty awkward):

He clearly doesn't want to talk about her confession because to him he made his feelings clear by staying with Nini ("Obviously"), so he got tense when he thought she meant Valentines Day was hard because of him rejecting her, and he only eased up a little when she explained it was about missing her mom.

The flashback also explains why Ricky tried to stop Big Red from telling Gina about the voicemail he wante to leave Nini. However, I don't blame Ricky for asking Gina for advice in 2x05. She'd given him advice about Nini unprompted in 2x03 and then pretended to be fine with giving some more advice in 2x04. It's logical that Ricky would think this meant she was already over him. Gina's tendency to hide her hurt feelings simply backfired on her here. Which is another thing the flashback clears up, because Gina had been hinting that something had happened throughout 2A but never actually opened up about it, which only further isolated her from her friends, even though they kept reaching out to her.

Another purpose of the flashback is to tell us something about who Gina is as a person. She voices how she feels she never does anything right the first time, but that she just keeps on pushing and never quits. That's essentially her describing her coping mechanism for all the changes and curveballs life throws her way. She said something similar in 2x05 when she talked about how she and Carlos would just keep on dancing no matter what happened next. She sees this as something negative, but her conversation with EJ in 2x08 helps her reframe this, because he sees it as her being brave. That's why it was good for us to hear her voice that in the flashback.

We also see how hard it is for Gina to be open and honest about how she feels. Especially when she's afraid of getting rejected. It took her a long time to get to the point in the flashback scene because she was terrified of putting herself out there and knew it was very likely she'd get rejected. She even called herself stupid for getting emotional. Still, she did it, and that in and of itself also showed us how brave she is. But she didn't fully let herself be brave and didn't fully open herself up to rejection, because she did end up voicing her feelings in a way that gave Ricky an easy excuse not to answer. She didn't ask him how he felt and simply ended the conversation on her own terms.

Compare that with how much she's grown in 2x12: she doesn't just confess her feelings to EJ, but asks him if she can kiss him and if he'll be her first kiss. This time, she's brave enough to put herself out there, didn't need ages to get to the point (she only hesitated very briefly with her "Can I..."), and asked the boy she likes how he feels. We wouldn't be able to fully see that growth if we hadn't seen the flashback.

In conclusion: the flashback was there to highlight Gina's growth in the rest of the season and to close the door on R*na romantically by showing us that Ricky is aware of how she felt and doesn't reciprocate. Ricky and Gina do need to talk eventually to repair their friendship, but when it comes to their romantic relationship there's nothing to talk about. Which is why they didn't.