Well… what can I say? This was honestly beautiful. My Top 2 episode of all time, but I can understand this being the best episode of all time with ease. That ending scene was one of the most beautiful sequences that I’ve seen in my entire life. After finishing this I was shaking and tears were in my eyes. Such a beautiful episode of TV, honestly.

The episode starts with Brenda giving birth to Willa and Ruth holding her hand. I found such a beautiful detail the fact that every single episode of this show starts with a death as the opening scene, but this episode represents how the characters have changed and how they have developed for the good, and instead of starting with a death, it starts with a birth. Another life in this world instead of another less. While Brenda has to recover and Willa has to be incubated, Ruth takes care of Maya, until Brenda’s mother appears and demands her to deliver Maya to Brenda, which is something that completely breaks her after everything she’s been through. Her firstborn is dead, her other two kids either live with someone else or they’re going to and now she thinks she won’t even be able to see her two granddaughters. The only she has to hold on to is her ex husband George, who isn’t even the one that she wants to be with once they have to move to a different place.

Nate’s death doesn’t only affect Ruth but also David, who is so out of his mind that Keith recommends him to get out of the house for a while, which is something that upsets both of them, which is something that even makes David think about selling their family business now that Nate isn’t here anymore and Federico wants his part. Meanwhile, Claire receives some great news involving her being accepted as a photographer assistant in New York, which makes her wanna move there to fulfill her dreams.

One of the most heartbreaking moments of the episode is Ruth finding Maya’s toy monkey after she had lost it. At first, Ruth sees that as something sad and tragic because it reminds her that she doesn’t have Maya anymore and she will lose contact with anyone of her flesh and blood, but they use it as an excuse to visit the Chenowith house, which is such a wholesome scene. The meeting at that house is amazing, especially for Brenda, who has to see Nate Fisher just standing there all the time talking about how bad Willa is and how sick she is and how she shouldn’t have never had her in the first place. The way this turns out afterwards is great.

One of the most important scenes of the episode is David’s dream sequence. After deciding that they will be selling Fisher & Diaz he has a dream where he sees his own father telling him how he will never escape from that reality. After facing his own fear and trauma, represented as the “killer” he realizes it’s him and that his trauma is a part of him, he wakes up and sees his brother sitting on his bed with him, bringing him the comfort that he needs. This is important because after he realizes that he has to move on and keep living, like his father told him in the end of S4, he feels like his family business is what’s important to him and what he has to honor, which makes him keep it.

One of the best parts in the entire episode is the whole sequence focused on Ruth and Brenda. Ruth calls Maggie, apparently to ask her about what they were doing before Nate had that stroke, but the only thing she asks is: “Was he happy?” Ruth accepting that his firstborn is gone and making sure that the last emotion that went through his head was happiness is what makes her “move on”, which is what leads to the next couple of scenes. Ruth decides that she will have to move on with George or with Sarah and Claire will be gone when she goes to that job in New York. Claire tells her mother that she can stay to take care of her, because her family’s good is more important than a job. At this point in the show, Ruth has already accepted that her children need to be happy more they need to be with their mother, which is why Ruth tells Claire to follow her dreams. Another thing that she does is forming bonds with Brenda, making peace between each other and offering to help her raise Maya and Willa, which gives some closure to the way Ruth has been handling her situation. But this scene is also important to what comes after. When Brenda goes into Willa’s bedroom he sees Nate again, but instead of being pessimistic about her daughter like he has been during the whole episode, he expresses his true love about Brenda and about Willa. Brenda is able to see Willa as a daughter to raise and a purpose of life instead of a burden she has to carry with that reminds her about her husband’s death, which is some amazing conclusion for Brenda’s character arc.

One of the most amazing scenes of the episode is the one that comes next. Claire receives a call where they tell her that she would have to move to Chicago instead of New York for that job but she was already planning to move to NY. At that moment, she sees her inspiration, her older brother, Nate, who tells her to go to New York no matter what and face the possibilities that life can offer. Same as Ruth, Nate talks to Claire about what she has to do to truly be happy, instead of being scared about the what if’s. “I spent my whole life being scared. Scared of not being ready, not being right, not being who I should be. And where did it get me?” Claire faces the fact that she will have to leave to a totally new place that she doesn’t know and start living life like an adult, and so she gets ready for the last family dinner. That dinner scene is amazing. Instead of grieving about Nate being dead they start remembering the good and funny moments of their life. Last episode Claire was so worried that the only thing she could remember about Nate was some stupid and meaningless fight they had instead of the good things, but in this scene everyone contributes to say goodbye to Nate in the happiest way possible. Not remembering him as the way he’s not now but as the way he was before.
“To Nate. May he rest in peace.”

And so we finally get to the last and most emotional scene of the whole episode. Claire says goodbye to everyone from there, members of her family or just people she loves and decides to be happy and to move on. Claire decides to take a picture of her family and her house and Nate says: “You can’t take a picture of this, it’s already gone”. Life moves so fast that you can’t detain yourself to picture a specific moment that you’re living right now, you just have to keep living, which is what the final montage is really about. The final montage is just something that can make anyone in this world cry. Seeing everyone getting old, living their lives and eventually dying as Claire drives might be seen as a very sad scene. But apart from expressing the message that everybody dies eventually, and that no one can escape from death, I prefer to see it in a different way. In that montage they don’t only use scenes of those characters dying, but they also use David and Keith’s wedding, Claire and Ted’s wedding, or even pictures of Maya, Anthony and Durrell growing up. Everyone dies eventually but you don’t have to be sad because they will die, you should be happy because they lived, so focus on enjoying life before it’s too late.

Arguably the most beautiful conclusion in all of TV. Every character simply has the most perfect and suitable conclusion they could get. Masterpiece of an episode, without a single doubt.


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