The scene: With Rebecca’s blessing, Ted begs off the post-game presser to attend Henry’s parent/teacher conference. Rebecca volunteers Roy to fill Ted’s seat, but Beard is the one who actually shows up. We drop in just as he is verging on alienating the entire press corps with a rather maniacal dragging of Led Zeppelin lead guitarist Jimmy Page. (Joe Walsh? C’mon, Beard, you could have gone with Hendrix or even Eddie Van Halen, eh? Ted would have gone with PRN – Prince Rogers Nelson.) Rebecca intervenes as Beard gets the hook, but she’s pissed.
Afterwards, Higgins offers up an attempt to soothe her consternation by saying it’s just Roy being Roy, but she isn’t having it. It’s time for Rebecca to be Rebecca, and she flies to the locker room (“Oi, Kent”) and calls Roy on to the rug, demanding he bring his “hairy ass” to her office ASAP.
When Roy enters Rebecca’s office with his patented “What the fuck is your problem,” Rebecca gets straight to the point and roasts him for blowing off her direct instruction to handle the press conference. Roy quickly tucks in his tail, and we get this exchange:
Game, set, match to Rebecca the Boss (finally!).
But “ponderous?” This strikes the ear as a new example of British usage unknown in these parts. Best to see whether Merriam-Webster might explain this one. Sure enough, one finds the dictionary offers three definitions:
ponderous: pon·der·ous
1: of very great weight
2: unwieldy or clumsy because of weight and size
3: oppressively or unpleasantly dull; LIFELESS
Okay, then, the third definition it is. So, our pal Roy, being well-versed in proper usage, recognizes immediately that Rebecca sees his soul well, and has no choice but to ponder changing his “woe is me thing.” That’s “ponder” as in to weigh in the mind, appraise, chew over, cogitate, kick around, ruminate, wrestle with, or to consider especially quietly, soberly, and deeply.
The big question, then, is will this episode feed us any sort of pay-off to Roy’s pondering?
Sure enough, in the penultimate scene, we get Roy blindsiding Rebecca by taking on Ted’s press conference – the “big one” after Isaac has gotten a red card for barging into the stands to give a piece of his mind to a loud-mouth, homophobic hooligan, leaving the team short-handed.
Roy’s defense of the team captain is somehow both vintage Roy in its honesty and a stunning demonstration of his ongoing emotional growth–not only in refusing to judge the underlying reason for Isaac’s conduct, but also in offering real sympathy.
In the course of about 38 minutes, Roy Fucking Kent shows his transformation from the sulking scion of suffering to a straight up advocate for the release of repressed emotion. Nothing drab or tedious about that.
