Writer
Liberty Godshall
Director
Ken Olin
Air Date
12/11/90
Guest Stars
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Writer
Director
Air Date
Guest Stars |
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Joseph Brutsman as Ted Brunel; Laura Owens as group leader; David Clennon as Miles Drentell; Andra Millian as Angel Wasserman; Carey Eidel as Man; Sally Prager as Young Woman; Lindsay Riddell as Brittany Weston (from now on)
Synopsis
Nancy and Elliot deal with her cancer and the toll it takes on their family.
Summary
Ethan goes poking through the house at night with a flashlight and disturbs Nancy's sleep, which is the first shot shown of her having lost most of her hair. Everyone is rushing around to get ready in the morning when Nancy gets a phone call asking for her to exhibit a painting in a "real" show. Nancy attends a workshop on guided imagery to help her deal with the cancer. While participating, she has difficulty picturing a warm, safe place.
At D.A.A., Angel mentions that Michael has been nominated for an Opus and it becomes apparent that Elliot didn't know. While Elliot and Nancy are assembling a simply enormous tree fort for Ethan, he arrives home and they discover that he has a nice shiner. Nancy cleans him up and keeps asking how he is and how he got it. Hope drives Nancy to chemotherapy while discussing the upcoming second look surgery and other aspects of the cancer. Nancy tries to use visualization but can only see herself, dead in a coffin. Afterwards, Nancy feels very ill and is too sick and guilty to work on the painting for the show. Ethan tries to help by bringing her a glass of water.
Elliot and Michael goof around at the office and re-write Michael's acceptance speech. Nancy and Ethan work some more on the tree fort and Nancy tries to talk with Ethan about how to get out of the fight or fight defensively. Elliot barges in with good intentions and ends up showing Ethan how to throw a left hook, much to Nancy's dismay. Nancy goes early to soccer practice to meet Ethan's coach, Ted Brunel. She begins to share her concerns about his fighting and quickly becomes emotional and distraught, asking Ted how he's going to protect and look out for Ethan when she's not there.
Returning home, Elliot joins her in the car and she shares how stark the statistics are for cancer survival and how that makes her feel about using guided imagery. Hope and Ellyn come over for tea when Ethan comes home, beat up again. They talk about it and seem to handle it fairly well, and even begin roughhousing until Nancy becomes very tired and starts coughing. Elliot returns home to find her sleeping on the floor, so he insists on calling Michael to cancel on going to the award ceremony in order to stay with Nancy.
The next morning, Michael has obviously won the award and everyone congragulates him at D.A.A. Nancy calls the exhibit people and tells them that she just can't do the painting since she isn't feeling well and can't pull it together. Nancy takes Ethan and Britty to a Chinese restaurant and the kids make a simply horrible scene and she is forced to drag them out, telling Ethan he can't play soccer anymore. Elliot returns home to find her amid a sea of Tupperware, upset, tired, and exhausted with the cancer, the ordeal, and her life.
Michael and Elliot finally get to talk at work and Elliot tries to explain why he wasn't at the awards show which rapidly leads into his emotional breakdown about how hard everything has been lately. Michael tries to understand and hugs him at the appropriate moment.
Nancy goes back to the visual imagery group and honestly shares that she doesn't feel it's been working, facing questions of whether or not she really wants to live. After a nap that afternoon, she and Britty go to watch Ethan at soccer (she's not supposed to know he's still playing) and she sees Ethan make a goal and then be shoved down by a female teammate and soundly kissed.
That night, Nancy and Elliot talk in the moonlight about how she wants him to come back to Victory Partners, the cancer group, again, and about Ethan's kiss and how she really wants to live "because she doesn't know how it all turns out yet." She gives the imagery another try and sees flashes from past happy times (her 38th birthday, announcing that her book will be published, talking to her mother) interspersed with a search through her childhood home only to find herself as a child, painting. The episode closes with a shot of the family together in the completed treehouse.
Notes
Britty has a gerbil named Sad; Ethan is in the midst of a science fair project about the effects of heavy metal on plants; Nancy only has two more treatments to go; Vivaldi's The Four Seasons plays in the background of the entire sequence while Ethan plays soccer (see analysis); the original music played over Nancy's final set of images and recollections was Karla Bonoff's "The Water is Wide" from the soundtrack. This has been replaced with something as of yet unidentified.
Fashion
Nancy wears a wig and brown, red, and blue bandanas. And lots of hats.
Quotes
"What can I say? I'm living with a woman who's an inspiration to us all." --Elliot, quite sincerely
"I look like Jane Jetson in this [wig]." --Nancy
--"Oh no, did I hit a squirrel?" --Hope, while driving
--"No, he waved. He's fine." --Nancy
"Elliot, can't you be the designated adult just this once?" --Nancy
"I'm going to change my name to Telly Savalas." --Nancy
Analysis
"I wanted to put in my two cents' worth on the significance of the title of yesterday's rerun, "guns and roses," which was particularly poignant to me since I've personally struggled with the very same issues. I'm also undergoing treatments/recovering from another (somewhat minor) surgery for recurrent ovarian cancer myself. (I do remember being profoundly touched by Nancy's cancer battle when I first saw the episodes as a teenager, but now...whoa!)
"Anyway, I see that many folks have suggested that the title's connected with Ethan's music experiment, mentioning the heavy metal band Guns 'n Roses. As you've said, that is quite possible, but I may (unfortunately for me!) have an insight that's somewhat more probing (literally!) You see, chemotherapy for ovarian tumors is primarily a drug called cisplatin or carboplatin, both derivatives of platinum, a HEAVY METAL. (Now first-line treatment includes cisplatin or cisplatinum and Taxol, the drug that Hope's telling Ellyn in the scene where Nancy's fixing them tea--so, hey! thirtysomething was actually on the medical frontier, since the 1990 episode preceded the use of Taxol for ovarian cancer by nearly two years!) Therefore, using the name of an en vogue (by 1990 standards) heavy metal band might not only relate to Ethan's experiment but also to Nancy's struggles with chemo. Perhaps I'm stretching this, but I wouldn't put it past the cerebral creators of our fave program!
"And again, I may be off my rocker, but I have a feeling that the overall title of "guns and roses" may apply to the general lesson that Nancy has learned from her battle with cancer. The guns may refer either to the chemotherapy, which we see Nancy dealing with the ravages of in this episode and which works by targeting certain "bad" cells and killing them but also sometimes takes down "good cells" with it, hence the side effects; OR metaphorically to Nancy's struggle for life being "gunned" down: of all the women in the world, she's one of the unlucky few "shot" with the burden of cancer, and now her life is at stake, up in the air, etc. And the roses--the ultimate symbol of beauty and life and rebirth, blooming in the spring, etc.--likely refer to the joys, ever so much sweeter now that Nancy has confronted her mortality. Cancer has taught her that every moment is truly a gift. I think this theory may be supported by Nancy's dialogue to Elliott about wanting to be around even for the inconsequential things after being so severely annoyed by a seemingly inconsequential thing (Ethan and Britty's bickering in the Chinese restaurant) and by the fact that at the beginning of the episode, Nancy's imagery has to do with death but the end sequence shows encapsulized moments of happiness she has lived--and that she longs to continue to live, as shown by the family playing in the treehouse.
"Like I said, I may be way off, but this is what I honestly believe "guns and roses" refers to--and for me, it's helped, since it's a lesson I've had to learn myself. Also, I beg to differ on the part of Nancy and the soccer coach: I feel that "falling apart... over something relatively minor" is the whole point. That in and of itself is a moment of painful clarity for her. The fact that she may not always be around to protect Ethan (because cancer may claim her life) so that she has to look to others to watch over her children is breaking her heart. Of course, this is something she's tried to talk to Elliott and her friends about, but they turn a deaf ear because they love her and can't bear to think of anything but her getting well, which is only natural. (She even cries "Don't love me so much" to Elliott, in an attempt, I suppose, to make him deal with the issue of possibly losing her.) It's such an element of her humanity and emotional fragility of the moment, of the fact that she's so alone in her cancer struggle, that she breaks down in front of a virtual stranger."
Thanks for sharing all this with us, Kristin--please, write in at any time.
"Remember when Ethan wouldn't disclose who hit him? I think it was the girl who kissed Ethan at the end of the soccer game that hit him previously! Ethan refused to tell Nancy who the person was who hit him, so obviously he was embarrassed he was slugged by a girl, who also happens to like him and didn't know how to show him."
Makes sense to me, Angie!
"Ethan's experiment about the effects of music on plants allowed the writers to do a tribute to the movie The Four Seasons (1981, written by and starring Alan Alda). In that movie, Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" plays through the movie, including during a game of soccer. Ethan's game had the same feel as the movie's scene as "The Four Seasons" played in the background."
The water is wide, I can't cross o'er
And neither have I wings to fly
Give me a boat that can carry two
And both shall row, my love and I
Oh love is gentle and love is kind
The sweetest flower when first it's new
but love grows old and waxes cold and fades away
like morning dew
There is a ship and she sails the sea
She's loaded deep as deep can be
But not as deep as the love I'm in
I know not how I sink or swim
The water is wide, I can't cross o'er
And neither have I wings to fly
Give me a boat that can carry two
And both shall row, my love and I
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