A Million Little Things recap: Moms, psychics, and Jason Ritter

We kick off this week’s episode of A Million Little Things with a visit from Maggie’s mom, Patricia (The Office‘s Melora Hardin). She’s supposed to be in town for the weekend, but when she rocks up with 7 thousand suitcases, Maggie and Gary realize very quickly that is not the, um, case. Indeed, as it transpires, Patricia has left Maggie’s father and is moving to Boston! Cue a lot of anger from Maggie, who’s apparently never really been close with her mom and figured if her parents could get through her brother’s death together, they could get through anything. Not according to Patricia. She’s ready to start living the rest of her life.

Elsewhere, Delilah is trying to sing the new baby to sleep but can’t remember the song Jon always used to get the kids to stop crying, so she calls Regina, who’s at the restaurant, to pick her brain. Gina is too busy with brunch reservations to be much help, and D is pleasantly surprised to hear reservations have picked up after Andrew mentioned they’d been down lately. Gina is not pleased to hear Andrew and D have been discussing the restaurant without her, but just then Delilah is interrupted by Barbara and her husband Mitch showing up at her door. Jon’s late bestie’s ex (yeah, that’s right) has been getting notices from the Rutledge trust — the one Jon set up to compensate Barbara and P.J. for abandoning them. Mitch says he doesn’t want the money because it’ll lead to his son finding out he’s been lying to him his whole life. Barb’s all, not so fast…

Speaking of young P.J., he reaches out to Rome while the latter is volunteering at a suicide hotline. Rome welcomes the call as he’s feeling the pressure of someone’s life being in his hands, terrified he might say the wrong thing. P.J. asks to meet and ends up coming over for dinner, where he shares with Rome that he thinks he’s not the son Mitch wants him to be. The pair bond over their differences with their fathers. Just then, P.J. spots a pic of Jon, Gary, Rome, and Eddie and, recognizing Jon, asks Rome who he is. It doesn’t take long for Rome to put two and two together and realize that P.J. already knows Jon from somewhere. Eventually, P.J. fesses up that he believes Jon is his real dad.

On the topic of lying about parentage, Delilah is anxious about everything and is worried the baby is picking up on it. She feels like she’s failing everyone, especially Jon; she can’t even get Barb to take money and that was the one thing he wanted. She’s scared Jon is slipping away, but Andrew — the restaurant owner dude, who is over at her place helping out — comforts her, telling her she needs to forgive herself.

Andrew has his own drama to deal with. He and Gina get into an argument at the restaurant; she thinks he’s interfering in the running of the place. He tells her he’s trying to help with the bottom line and thinks the restaurant will be gone in three months if she doesn’t change things and listen to his suggestions. Gina is initially unimpressed, but later concedes he might be right and calls him to talk through his ideas.

Or maybe they could just ask a psychic? Yup, Gina’s old friend Elon has stopped by for brunch and he happens to be a very talented psychic. Gary is skeptical, but Gina thinks D should get a reading since it might help her find some closure about Jon. Maggie decides to go along too, mostly just to piss off Gary. A first it seems Elon has really connected with Jon when he starts telling Delilah that there was nothing she could’ve done to save him. But then Elon mentions that she was the last thing he was thinking of before he got into that accident, and Delilah realizes it can’t be her husband he’s talking to/about since he didn’t die in a car wreck. Maggie’s brother, Chad, did though. She’s very emotional, but Gary can’t bring himself to buy into it and be supportive.

After, Maggie goes out for a run to try and get her thoughts together, while her mom returns from looking at apartments. She and Gary eat sandwiches together and Maggie shares that she also went to a physic after Chad died because she wanted to believe he was still there. She realizes now, however, that she can’t spend her whole life mourning and has to appreciate what she has instead of thinking about what she’s lost. Gary surmises from this that she’s in town to spend more time with her daughter and offers her Maggie’s old apartment. When Maggie gets home, Gary apologizes and encourages her to go find her mom where she’s having dinner at a local restaurant and give them a chance to connect. Without so much as a quick, post-run body shower, Maggie heads off to the restaurant where an extremely snooty and rude maitrê’ d’ sends her to the bar to wait. And who’s sitting at the bar, also feeling victimized by the horrible host, than the lovely Jason Ritter! Okay, he’s not playing himself — that’d be too good to be true. Noticing Maggie is also reeling from her run-in with the maitrê’ d’, the charming man at the bar strikes a conversation and they flirt a little back and forth. It all culminates in Maggie being dared to go and antagonize the host further which she gamely does, only to return to the bar to find Ritter’s character warmly (though not necessarily romantically) greeting her mom. Maybe Maggie wasn’t the only reason Patricia decided to make Boston her new home… Can’t say we blame her.

On the Katherine/Eddie front, Katherine finally comes home. Theo is ecstatic, but his mom is far from okay. Later, when they go to a gardening event at Theo’s school and the other moms are bitchy about her recent absence, she gets upset and breaks down crying. Back at home, Katherine explains to Eddie how she’s always worked so hard to make her life perfect. She tells him about a time in her second year of law school when she found herself struggling and decided to go to a concert to blow off some steam. Of course, that concert was Eddie’s band. Apparently back then Eddie was “sexy and cool” and they got a drink and her life was never the same. He taught her to live for today and she taught him how to believe in tomorrow. Eddie tells her he wants tomorrow with her and he’ll do anything to get them back there, but Katherine tells him with this new baby, they can’t. Katherine then uses a Grand Canyon metaphor to describe how they’ve eroded over time but that can give way to something beautiful. So, instead of getting back to what they were, they should figure out what they’re going to be. The first step in that process seems to be Eddie staying at the house to help Katherine get through it. He says he’ll do anything for her and she says, “Congratulations on your new daughter.” Gah, I love Katherine. Later, they cozy up with Theo as a family. How confusing.

Maybe things will be clearer next week? Let’s all join together in skeptical laughter!

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