The A Million Little Things family keeps expanding and growing, and now we have another baby to add to the mix.
The highly-anticipated birth of Gary and Magge’s child took place on A Million Little Things Season 5 Episode 6, which didn’t disappoint.
And the hour also saw a Tyrell return, a Delilah cameo, and a Katherine and Greta engagement.
The ball is moving along with the series as it attempts to wrap up everyone’s storylines in some capacity or another and set them on their next path in life.
The birth of Javier Chad Mendez is a milestone for the series and this fan-favorite couple, and while it had a few moments of intensity and a lot of drama leading up to it, we were confident that the result would be a happy one.
It felt like Maggie’s pregnancy went into hyper speed. Conveniently. as she settled on her last-minute birthing plans with the midwife and home birth and got over herself regarding her job at the radio station, baby Javier was ready to make his debut.
We started the hour with Braxton Hicks contractions and the notion that maybe they’d put off the birth for a bit longer, but we ended it with a happy family gathering in the Bloom-Mendez apartment as Javier made his debut.
We could’ve all guessed that Maggie and Gary’s son would be named after the men who mattered most in their lives, and in that sense, naming their child after Gary’s father and Maggie’s brother couldn’t be more fitting.
I also like the idea of baby Javier embracing his name and heritage without apology or shame in a way that Gary could not do.
And hey, it’s not as if little Javi won’t have the most Anglo-Saxon name ever to fall back on with his middle name of Chad if he so chooses.
In many ways, I still wish the setup for Magge’s prenatal care leading up to the birth aired towards realism with adequate planning. And they attempt to ratchet up the drama with the baby’s head stuck behind her pubic bone.
But everything had its desired effect.
Do they know where the baby will be staying? It was fascinating that Eddie and Rome only managed to put together a baby crib in all this time, and it was Charlie’s.
In fact, what does it even say about how Maggie and Gary sailed through the pregnancy with little planning that they took everything from the Dixon home to use as their own?
It needles at the mind that this pairing has often fallen into an inexplicable and irksome ineptitude. It also feels out of character that Maggie and Gary would be woefully unprepared and last minute with every aspect of their child’s arrival.
For example, it was puzzling that Maggie still had all of these things she had to wrap up at the radio station on the day of the baby’s birth. Wasn’t she working on wrapping up and pre-recording shows weeks ago?
It was that type of contrived storytelling that was hard to muster. But it was meant to connect Maggie and Jessica to reach a professional understanding.
The series could at least acknowledge that Maggie and Gary were the ones who behaved terribly in this Jessica situation. And frankly, if either of them had bothered to have a simple conversation with the woman, it wouldn’t have escalated as it did.
Jessica didn’t have anything to prove in this at all, so it was a courtesy on her part and, in some ways, a hassle that she even had to tell Maggie about why she got into therapy in the first place.
When this opportunity came up, I wanted to take it. I saw it as an opportunity to showcase a female Black therapist. But I should’ve taken your feelings into consideration. It must be so scary to step away, but I want you to know that I will treat your show with care, and it will be waiting for you when you’re ready.
Jessica
She didn’t owe Maggie her life story or common knowledge statistics combined with her personal experience that showcases how rare Black female therapists are and why that’s so important.
Maggie is the same person who spouted similar statistics to Rome and set him up with a Black man as his therapist because she was conscious enough to understand the difference that would make.
Even after that, Maggie still considered Jessica’s actions as doing “the wrong thing for the right reasons,” but at least we’re past this ridiculous aspect of the story now that Dr. Jessica has gone out of her way to reassure Maggie that her job will be waiting for her when she wants to come back. She’s not trying to replace her.
It’s a promise that she can’t exactly make herself, but in general, something was grating about the coddling Maggie required for this entire situation that was a disaster of her own making.
And Jessica is pure grace for her ability to listen to Gary and help him and Maggie despite how they both treated her.
Surprising no one, the radio show and Maggie’s callers are in great hands, and she can direct the next few months to her motherhood journey.
She and Gary will be great parents, and it’s a part of their story that will be good for them. At his most endearing, Gary was concerned about every aspect of Maggie’s pregnancy, and frankly, she gave him reason.
Gary has his Band of Dads to support him through this next phase in his life, and it warms my heart how much these guys have become each other’s persons through every aspect of their life.
If there’s one thing we can track throughout the series and cling to, it’s the deep bond between these brothers. And it’s moments like Gary doubling back to ask them to stay for him, even if it meant standing in a hallway for hours, that showcases that well.
With each new step in fatherhood, it’s comforting to know that Gary has this unwavering support from Eddie and Rome, who will do literally anything for him.
It’s remarkable how Rome has become part of that fatherhood tribe, even though he’s gotten there in such an untraditional way. He’s earned every bit of that title.
His frustration with Gina and her lack of communication was valid, and it’s puzzling that she went so far as to take Rome’s miles and didn’t even tell him about it.
He shouldn’t have had to call in, and she unwittingly subjected some customer service representative to Rome’s ire because she wasn’t upfront with her husband.
It also sucked that she made it seem as if he couldn’t be angry about it because they were helping someone, thus shaming him and invalidating his feelings because it was “the right thing to do.”
She left Rome feeling as if he was the ass for getting upset while she was helping an unhoused man.
The entire storyline with Gina and Dustin has been clunky at best, and it’s hard to figure out why it was a necessary piece of storytelling for Gina in the final season.
She overstepped and crossed boundaries with both Rome and Dustin for the entirety of the arc.
As worried as she was about Daniella, it wasn’t exactly her place to prod him about foster care, and it’s frustrating that she’s overlooked some of the pitfalls and issues with the system while making her case.
Yes, she and Rome are great foster parents, but not everyone is, and it’s not the most realistic to figure that Dustin would take one look at Gina interacting with Tyrell for a few moments and discard all of his fears.
Gina is a great person, but that’s not the case for every foster parent out there, regardless of vetting, and it can be particularly difficult for young girls around Daniella’s age and, frankly, race.
It was such an around-about way to get to Val, allowing Dustin and Daniella to stay in her spare room, that it was enough to make you wonder why Gina hadn’t tapped into her resources and connections to consider something like that in the first place.
Hell, at the rate the Dixon home was going, one almost wondered if they’d just rent out a room there.
Regarding the Dixon home, Sophie and Tyrell have gone from casual acquaintances and play cousins to potentially becoming a thing.
Doesn’t it seem like they were possibly headed in that direction? It’s the most charged their interactions have ever been, and it would be like this series to explore the possibility of having further the characters interconnected.
Rome: Bro, what is your problem?
Eddie: I don’t know; maybe it’s that this crib used to belong to my child, who I now barely even know. We just emptied the room she hardly lived in of the clothes she never wore.
Nevertheless, Sophie was a great friend when Tyrell needed it, and at the very least, that accounts for something.
It was one of those hours where it made you ponder time and how things have progressed, so thankfully; they addressed the Dixon housing situation when more questions were flaring up about how long that thing has been on the market unsold with nothing packed up and Sophie and the others wandering in and out of it at leisure.
It’s hard to believe that a house like that would have been on the market for so long or tied up as long as it had been, and it was getting to be ridiculous.
The guys wandering through there to basically hijack the entire nursery to transport to Gary’s apartment took the cake.
Via Delilah, in our first glimpse of her in what feels like a lifetime, we found out that they’ll be saying goodbye to the Dixon home for good soon.
In less than five minutes, Delilah popped up and embodied her typical self-absorbed, insufferable self.
The series was long overdue to address how she extricated Charlie from Eddie’s life. It was gratifying to see Eddie being fed up and expressing as much.
Sure, he wasn’t in the best place when Delilah left, and he had a lot going on, but Delilah was a hundred different kinds of wrong, and it’s messed up that the most consistently decent parent out of the two didn’t end up with primary custody of their kid.
Eddie has had quite the journey, remarkably, becoming one of the most endearing characters after seasons of being one of the most loathsome — a proper redemption arc for this show.
And by now, all you could want for him is that he get Charlie back, preferably sans Delilah. He deserves every opportunity to be with his child.
Delilah has spent the better part of the year screwing him out of that opportunity because she went from visiting France to permanently moving there without communicating.
She told Gary that he could take everything that belonged to Charlie without speaking to Eddie about it, which implies that she has no intentions of coming back with Charlie or having a space for Charlie where she has belongings she’d need if spending time with her father.
That’s it, you know? It’s finally going to be behind me.
Delilah
And now she’s officially sold the house and, without a hint of awareness, gleefully exclaimed that now she can be done with everything there as if she needed a clean break and that her child’s father, support network, hell, her freaking daughter, and everything else in Boston are somehow irrelevant and not part of her plan.
Do you know what’s great? The series finally leaning into the fact that Delilah is a selfish woman and the absolute worst. It’s so much better now that they aren’t pretending as if we’re supposed to love her.
Eddie’s feelings are beyond valid, and it’s unfortunate that because of his past, he didn’t feel he had a right to voice his hurt, anger, and concerns when things were happening.
But he’s in a much better, healthier, more stable, and more aware place.
Eddie’s self-awareness has been a breath of fresh air as he takes ownership and acknowledges the darker parts of his past. And he does it so casually and sincerely.
He could offer Gary advice about Braxton Hicks contractions, but only enough to state that Katherine had them, and he didn’t remember much else because he got wasted and missed the birth of his own child.
He knows where he went wrong in his life, and he can own those moments and acknowledge them and the harm they caused to his loved ones, and it’s such a contrast to Delilah in a brief video phone call, who is still this incredibly self-absorbed woman.
His chat with Rome was great. While Rome was also talking about his own issues, he encouraged Eddie to express himself, and it’s beyond time for that.
We’ll get into the custody situation over Charlie as Eddie becomes more frustrated. And I am unequivocally rooting for Eddie.
Charlie deserves the opportunity to be around her family, even for a few months, so Eddie can get to know his child in person rather than over a freaking screen.
And he has such a beautiful, blended family with uncles like Rome and Gary, and aunts like Gina and Maggie, and the beauty that is his arrangement with Katherine and Greta, too.
It was so sweet that he played a significant role in Katherine’s proposal, helping her plan it. It’s really meaningful that he and Katherine are still essentially best friends, that Eddie also has this kinship with Greta, and that they’re this modern blended family that’s unorthodox but full of love and support.
We’ve only gotten to this stage in Katherine and Greta’s relationship because the script dictates it for a happy ending.
But they’re a couple with issues that need to be fully addressed, and Katherine has been all over the place this season.
But, you know what? Fine. They’re both great characters who deserve happiness, and apparently, they are.
Katherine’s elaborate plan to propose on Greta’s birthday was beautiful, and she executed it brilliantly. The proposal at the same beach that Katherine rejected Greta back in high school was a great way of making a better memory there.
Katherine put much thought into every aspect of revisiting their past, and the words she shared when proposing were beautiful.
It was a perfect proposal and moment for those two and those who are fans of this relationship.
As shippers of the bond, it was a refreshing change of pace that Katherine put herself out there for Greta. We often know and see where Greta stands; she would’ve been the one you’d expect to propose.
I spent a lot of the past few years being disappointed. Nothing ever turned out the way I thought it would. But the minute I walked into that tattoo parlor, I realized that everything I saw as setbacks were just turns leading me back to you. Greta Strobe, will you marry me?
Katherine
Switching it on its head in that way reveals how much Katherine has grown and embraced new aspects of herself, her ability to be spontaneous and carefree, and put her feelings and heart out there.
We’ve seen her put her heart on the line and risk rejection. She’s acknowledged how much Greta has made her a better person. Katherine’s feelings in all of this have always been the lesser known, so she gets to firmly stand on them with such a bold act, especially after what she said about marriage before.
At this rate, we’ll get a wedding by the end of the series.
Over to you, AMLT Fanatics.
Are you excited about the engagement? How thrilled are you that baby Javier Mendez is here? Were you surprised by the Delilah cameo? Sound off below.
You can watch A Million Little Things online here via TV Fanatic.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.
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