All My Homies Love Ej Caswell - Tumblr Posts

twitter is so anti ej i'm gonna cry

i know 😩 i mostly try to avoid twitter because its such a fucking dumpster fire but the few times I have been on the hsmtmts side its been awful. It's mostly the rinas too which ?? okay you dont like portwell whatever but to come at a whole character?? AND the actor?? its so stupid and toxic. I was recently thinking about that petition that was going around to get Matt off the show and how they said it was 'just a joke' but even if it was that's absolutely disgusting. Matt's done nothing wrong and to try to get someone fired because of a fictional ship is a whole new low for them.

Actively obsessed with E.J.!! What a remarkable arc this character has. And Matt Cornett has been killing it with this role, especially as the romantic lead this season.

He's so funny, but he also adds so much humanity and sincerity to his seemingly at-first-glance smarmy persona. The thing is, he has crippling insecurity. His bravado of confidence has no bearing on what he actually feels about himself.

When he tells Ashlyn that he can't lose Nini because she makes him better, he's still focusing on himself and what this girl can do for him. He thinks he's on the right track because he found a great girl with depth and heart, but he realizes how selfish and possessive and narcissistic he's been and is disgusted with the person he's becoming.

So he just completely tries to strip down this fabricated prince charming version of himself and begins to examine every part of himself, even the scary parts. And on the other side of that, he stops looking at himself and starts looking at others. And when he falls for Gina, he is absolutely, 100% terrified that Gina does not, and will not ever, love the real him.

The conversation he has with Jamie is pretty telling about his character, even before Jamie brings up the "big brother" of it all. First of all, I personally see a parallel between these two. Jamie's "I'm just the man behind the music," was eerily similar to E.J.'s "It takes a whole village," in "Typecasting." Because that's the thing, right? If E.J. didn't have people in his life like Ashlyn, and now Gina, keeping him in check, he might have gone full throttle with continuing to cheat and scheme and charm his way into his handsome, rich white male privileged success.

So for Jamie to call him "charming" out of the gate... that hits a sore spot. He knows he's charming. He's been called charming all of his life. He's not insecure about how people view the persona he gives off. He's insecure about what people think of him past the smoke and mirrors.

And in Gina's mother's defense, of course E.J. walks on air to this woman. He bought her daughter a plane ticket. His cousin took Gina in. He picked Gina up from the airport. All of these things could very well be framed in a familial context, especially taking into account what Gina has chosen to share with her mother.

Jamie is solely trying to assuage his own big brother guilt here. He's not even tracking how E.J.'s reacting. What he's saying has nothing to do with E.J. and everything to do with letting himself off the hook for not being a part of Gina's life. He's not being mean-spirited, and he's not being protective. He's just incredibly self-involved. Unfortunately, E.J.'s too crushed and insecure to see that. The second that he catches wind of his feelings not being reciprocated, he quickly leaps to the wrong conclusion. Because who could ever learn to love the real him, right? Especially someone as brilliant and brave and gorgeous and real as Gina?

So while Gina is wrestling with putting down roots for the first time in her life and letting people in, E.J. is wrestling with accepting the fact that the people he cherishes most in his life love and support and adore the flawed person he is.

I think E.J. is such a well-written, well-acted character, and I'm thrilled that he's been given such focus this season. I'm so excited to see where his story goes from here.