Tough Stuff
Season 5 • Episode 12
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for A Million Little Things Season 5 Episode 12 “Tough Stuff.”]
If you didn’t sob by means of the penultimate episode of A Million Little Things, together with whereas Gary (James Roday Rodriguez) was making jokes all through, you’re made from harder stuff than we’re.
As feared, after coughing up blood throughout Katherine (Grace Park) and Greta’s (Cameron Esposito) wedding ceremony, Gary is dying. His most cancers has unfold to his different lung, and it’s now not responding to remedy. “This will be a fight,” his physician warns. And struggle Gary tries. He will get chemo. He shaves his head. He will get worse and worse, and shortly, it’s Javi’s first birthday. Javi will get his dad a T-shirt studying “The Original” to go along with his “The Remix.” Gary cracks a joke about being all the way down to a medium and shortly needing to raid Theo’s closet. No one laughs. “You gotta at least let me have my cancer jokes,” Gary tells them. “I’m here all week. We hope.”
His subsequent appointment with the oncologist doesn’t go away them with a lot hope, however Maggie (Allison Miller) focuses on persevering with to struggle, refusing to only settle for they’re on the level the place they’ll solely make Gary snug. “We’re at the point now where any treatment we try may affect his quality of life,” the physician says. But Maggie examine a examine utilizing insulin remedy — very experimental, the physician stresses — and decides that’s their subsequent step. “Thanks for getting me this far, doc,” Gary says on his manner out. “It means the world.”
In remedy with Jessica (Bresha Webb), Gary admits that whereas Maggie’s scared, he’s not. “I’m just really tired,” he shares. “Having Dr. Stein tell me I did everything I could was a huge relief.” Someone as soon as informed Jessica that each life has a size and a width, and it’s vital to not sacrifice the latter for the previous. Cue Gary’s “so you’re saying on top of everything else I’m dealing with now size matters?”
It’s after Gary has sat down with Katherine to go over his will (one thing he needs to maintain between them for now) that Maggie comes residence with the excellent news: He acquired into the examine in Mexico. He tries to protest, however “the only reason that I am still here is you never let me give up,” she tells him, and to her, it’s not completely different. “You made me fight, which is what you’re going to do.” She even dares him to go, primarily taking the choice out of his fingers.
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But Gary is aware of that is probably not going to go his manner. Yes, there’s a hit story on the web site, he tells Eddie (David Giuntoli) and Rome (Romany Malco), however his state of affairs is totally completely different. But “end of the day, [Maggie] needs to believe that she did everything she could, so I’m going to give whatever life I have left to making sure she doesn’t spend the rest of hers regretting anything.”
That means the others need to be ready to say “goodbye goodbye” on the airport. Danny (Chance Hurstfield) lies and says his interview for Harvard acquired pushed again; he’s actually at residence. (“Everyone has to deal with this in their own way. He knows I love him. I know he loves me. Danny and I are good,” Gary assures his sister.) Sophie (Lizzy Greene) decides to go to Mexico, ostensibly to assist, however, as she later admits, to place off saying goodbye. Rome and Regina (Christina Moses) miss an occasion for her marketing campaign. “We’re saying goodbye to our friend. Nothing else matters,” she says. “I needed a win,” he confesses, emotional.
And the group simply occurs to finish up the place Gary informed Maggie to go to England. “Sometimes I wish I could get that time back,” Gary says now. To begin off the farewells, Gary once more jokes: “Look, I know this Mexico trip seems like a complicated way to get fluent in Spanish, but I’m also going to get a legit farmer’s tan, OK? This is a win-win, for everybody.” And then one after the other, they hug him, attempting to faux they know they’ll see him once more whereas Gary says, to every:
“I’m proud of you, OK? And not just because you’re aging so gracefully, although that’s most of it.” (Eddie)
“Hey, do me a favor: Take care of my best friend Rome while I’m gone, OK?” (Rome, who repeats that again to him)
“I think I’ll miss you most of all, Scarecrow.” (Katherine)
“It feels like a bit of an overstep for my future city councilwoman, don’t you think? Don’t worry. I mailed in my ballot.” (Regina, after she says she loves him)
“Love you, too.” (Delilah)
Then after an “I love you” to everybody, a wheelchair is introduced out to Gary. “Oh, Ed, I get it, I get it,” he quips. It’s as soon as Maggie wheels him inside that she has her realization and brings him again to the others. “Hey, bad news, Ed. You’re no longer the most handsome one of us in a wheelchair,” Gary calls out. “Good news, Rome. You are no longer the only one battling male-pattern baldness.” Maggie explains, “I realized that he needs to be here for whatever time he — he just needs to be here, with all of us.” So what now? “We go home and you help me unpack and we all get in one bed together,” Gary says.
But their residence state of affairs is what results in Maggie breaking down, to Delilah (Stephanie Szostak). With speak of bringing in a hospital mattress to make him extra snug, they received’t even be sleeping in the identical mattress anymore, Maggie cries. “How am I supposed to do this? How did you do it?” Delilah tells her she’ll lean on them and get by means of it, like she did. “I’m going through the motions, and I know I don’t have much time with him. And I feel like I’m already grieving,” Maggie says. “I want to be laughing at his inappropriate jokes and I want my heart to not shatter every time Javi smiles at him, and I want to be able to enjoy the life we have left.” Maybe she will do each and rejoice their stunning household, Delilah suggests, and with that, Maggie is aware of what she must do.
It’s simply after Eddie has revealed that he and Delilah are shifting in down the corridor that Danny (who explains to Sophie that he didn’t go to the airport as a result of he didn’t know how you can say goodbye) stops by to see Gary. He is aware of what it’s like not having your dad round, Danny agrees with Gary, however “thanks to you, it was a lot less lonely.” And for Gary, “nothing would make me happier than if he turned out to be just like you.”
Then comes time to seek out out what Maggie discovered: She tracked down the ring that Gary had gotten her, then pawned to pay for Eddie’s rehab. The wild goose chase was price each second, she tells Gary, “kinda like you and me. You said at the airport you wish you could have all that time back, and I can’t help but wonder how life would look different if I had just said yes the first time. But one thing I absolutely do know is I want to celebrate every second we have left together and I want to do that as your wife. So, Gary Mendez, will you marry me?” He says sure, they kiss, after which in true Gary style, “Does this mean we can finally have sexual intercourse? The kind we learned about in school?”
And with that, the episode ends with the 2 getting married of their residence (and Rome officiating) and a style of pleasure amidst the tragedy and funeral to come back. In different phrases, precisely what we’ve come to anticipate from this present. Now, all that’s left is to say goodbye.
A Million Little Things, Series Finale, Wednesday, May 3, 10/9c, ABC