With potentially as few as three episodes before Season One is over I feel like A Million Little Things is still not quite sure what kind of show it wants to be. It’s got the drama mostly down and it’s pretty funny sometimes but if it’s going to continue past one season it needs to start moving beyond the notion that everything about this friend group will always be about Jon’s death. Every character clearly has enough happening in their lives without the show needing to revolve around this death forever. Not to mention, that would get pretty old after a while.

For now it still makes sense that Delilah would want to be putting any reminders of Jon out of sight and that Sophie would feel like this was an erasure of her father at a time when she wants to cement her memories of him. These feelings culminate in the eponymous “Friday Night Dinner,” a tradition Jon started where everyone comes over and they make pizza in a backyard brick oven (which made me swoon). As usual we get a couple flashbacks to previous Friday night dinners where we’re also introduced to Delilah’s father (Gerald McRaney) who’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

In the midst of all this everyone else is, for the most part, over the Delilah and Eddie affair. Except for Regina who is being very standoffish with Delilah despite the fact they’re trying to open a restaurant together. Rome and Gary take it upon themselves to get the women in a room together and it does not go great. Regina just can’t forgive. But it turns out towards the end of the episode that she can’t forgive herself for not realizing how lost and abandoned Delilah was feeling. Regina actually goes on quite an apology tour in this episode despite being the most blameless member of the group.

Katherine and Eddie are still dancing around each other at home but making it work for their son as well as they can. I mean I feel like your marriage can’t really come back from finding out there was an affair going on with a close friend…but they haven’t filed for divorce yet so who knows what’s going to happen. It is clear though that everyone is keeping everything quiet from the kids. When Sophie shows up wanting an impromptu guitar lesson with Eddie, Katherine welcomes her in and hangs out with her until Eddie gets home without a negative word.

We do finally find out a little more about Maggie’s cancer relapse and it’s worse than I thought. The cancer has moved to her lymph nodes. She asks the doctor how long she’ll have if she does absolutely no treatment. Somehow she seems pretty surprised when the answer is about six months. For the rest of the episode she debates both whether she should tell Gary (she should, but doesn’t) and whether she should get the treatment (she should and instead throws away her treatment plan.) Honestly, I’m a little annoyed with her. Sure, treatment is scary and who knows if it’ll work again, but six months is a SUPER short amount of time! I assume and hope she’ll change her mind again, but for now it’s a little irritating. Luckily, Gary at least finds out that her cancer is back and thankfully he doesn’t confront her about it but I can see that confrontation coming soon.

The episode ends with Katherine and Eddie bringing Sophie home just in time for pizza night. It looks like it’s going to be super awkward for a minute as Eddie and Katherine insist they need to leave and go eat dinner at home. But then their adorable kid (whose name I must learn) insists they stay for pizza because he loves pizza night, so they do. It’s honestly so great. It’s just a nice scene of everyone being grownups and making pizza and keeping up a tradition that meant a lot to all of them at one point or another. There is also a heartbreaking moment when Delilah’s father Lenny insists they wait for Jon and no one can bear to tell him what’s happened again. I’m sure we’ll see some more of that down the line.

All in all I’m loving A Million Little Things still. I feel like there are a couple things that need ironing out and so I hope there will be more than the 7 episodes currently listed on IMDB. Either way, I’m certainly enjoying the journey to wherever we’re going!

 

What’s your favorite kind of pizza?

Would you marry someone just for that backyard pizza oven?

Would you eat pizza with the woman who slept with your husband?

 

NOW THAT THE OFFICIAL A MILLION LITTLE THINGS REVIEW IS OUT OF THE WAY, FOLLOW MY STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS BULLET POINTS BELOW!

  • They really seem like they’re retconning Katherine into past situations
  • Oh shit, Maggie’s cancer is worse than we thought – in the lymph nodes
    • Girl, I get it but you need treatment
  • It is nice that Gary is the one in Delilah’s corner
  • The chicken euphemisms are pretty great
  • Regina…I love you…but you gotta stop being a jerk to Delilah
  • LOL Eddie’s band is kind of hilarious
  • I need to know what’s going on with Ashley!!!
  • Are we going to get to see this restaurant open? I feel like it’s going to be super nice
  • Grandpa makes me sad
  • Oh man…I wish Sophie was not doing what she’s doing
  • Gary is such a ladies man – what the hell!
    • Yeah Maggie…you can’t imagine you were the first girl he took in the bathroom
  • Every single character has deep seated emotional issues that they are not addressing
  • Hey look, an instance of Jon being a dick!
  • Maybe Ashley’s great?!
    • That was a weird moment with the suits though…
  • Come on Eddie…this is not a good enough excuse to fall off the wagon…
    • It’s good to see a glimpse of Eddie’s rock bottom
  • I need Maggie to get treatment because these lunches with Rome just immediately became my favorite parts of this show.
  • It’s almost as if Rome should have just talked to Regina a long time ago
  • Oh damn…Gary’s about to show Maggie how much he can change!
    • That’s literally not even that bad…
    • Chicks dig scars
    • Maggie does at least
  • Katherine and Sophie are a fun combo I didn’t know I wanted
    • It’s nice to see Katherine be pleasant about Delilah
  • Maggie! No!!!
  • Come on guys, you can all be grownups and have pizza night again!
  • Damn, Regina is the least to blame and she’s the one who feels the most guilty about not being there for everyone else
  • It looks like Gary is upset he can’t give someone secret chemo without them knowing
  • This Pizza night looks legit btw – I want to go