Rooster Season-Finale Recap: A Christmas Story

Rooster
Songs for Raisa
Season 1 Episode 8
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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It’s a Christmas miracle! Despite all evidence to the contrary, the love triangle was resolved by the end of the season! We have a freshly single Katie, a furious Sunny, a contrite Archie, and a brand-new antagonist for season two. This was a relatively low-key but incredibly sweet finale that hit all the pleasure centers a good comedy finale should hit. There was comeuppance, a celebration, lots of touching moments, and a delicious cliffhanger that makes us want so much more. 

Rooster may have dragged a bit throughout its freshman season, but this finale was a sparkling reminder that this show is basically just trying to serve up a big hug in an entertainment landscape that so desperately needs more laughs and love. As Greg prepares to leave Ludlow, he’s trying to step back from meddling in Katie’s life while going on a good-bye tour. The episode opens with Elizabeth and Greg sitting at brunch, waiting for their daughter so they can address the fact that they got her the job at the college in the first place. Elizabeth continues to be an infuriating character, interrupting with rude and unhelpful asides throughout the entire family meeting, casually gnawing on an orange slice as Greg and Katie have a heart-to-heart across the table. Greg eventually agrees not to meddle in Katie’s life, even if she goes all Jesse Pinkman, and Elizabeth cuts her involvement short so she can meet with Graham, the toothless trustee from last week. Greg’s protest — “You double-booked a family crisis?!” — is good for a laugh, as is Elizabeth’s cavalier response: “Oh no, we helped our kid too much! I think we’re gonna be fine.”

Let’s talk about Elizabeth, because I never liked this woman from the start. Now that she’s poised to be the big bad of season two, I’m living for it. Elizabeth has visited her daughter exactly twice this semester, once because Ludlow was dedicating the student center to her and now so she can schmooze with the trustees to nab Walt’s job. She’s a chaos monster, living purely on instinct and id. Even though she knows that it’s taken Greg literal years to get over her, she hangs up her own photo from Fortune magazine on the hook in his living room, where the Italy picture was hanging last time she visited. Then she tries to make a move on him! Devil woman! Greg is strong enough to resist her advances, and we see why it took him so long to get over her in the first place; she was probably constantly confusing things and crossing boundaries to get attention.

Elizabeth is trying to take all sorts of things that aren’t hers. By the end of the episode, we’ve seen Walt’s fears were fully valid and she’s been gunning for his job all along. The last scene of the finale, in which Greg calls Walt to stay on at Ludlow, and Walt tells him the news about Elizabeth taking over, truly made my heart sink. Walt is a man who has dedicated himself to the school for years (maybe decades?), and here’s Elizabeth, swooping in to steal his job on a whim. Greg knows Elizabeth well, and the final beat of him ripping her magazine picture off the wall feels like the completion of his transformation into a man who is over his toxic ex. (Much like every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings, every time someone gets over someone in a TV show, “Blister in the Sun,” by the Violent Femmes, plays in my head. Thanks, My So-Called Life!)

This episode is full of breakups, and the deconstruction of the Archie/Katie/Sunny triangle is incredibly satisfying, even if it’s somewhat contrived. Archie agonizes over Katie’s assertion at the diner that she’s “in” for their relationship, considering Mikhail Gorbachev’s perspective on his wife in the process. Apparently, Gorbachev was so smitten with his wife that his critics said they were worried he loved her more than the country. When she died, he released an album of songs called “Songs for Raisa,” and this will certainly be the only Russian-history factoid I retain from Archie’s classes, mostly because they were cancelled, short, or extremely boring. 

Gorbachev’s love for his wife somehow convinces Archie to go for it with Katie, and he quickly tells her the news. They smooch in a file room and then Archie does the right thing and tells Sunny. Perhaps it would have been better to make this decision, say, before she turned down a big job in New York City or booked plane tickets back home to Wisconsin for the holidays, but Katie kind of came out of nowhere with her declaration of love and poor Sunny ended up paying the price. Sunny, for her part, is horrified and furious. Her assertion that he is choosing the wrong path is chilling and probably accurate. She gives Archie one final out, telling him that she’ll be leaving for their flight at 8 a.m. the next morning. The mournful and soft way that Archie says “I’m not going to be there, darling” is heartbreaking. It boggles my mind that Sunny thought this man was going to fully commit to her based on a drive-by of a potential house for them to live in, but she’s only in her 20s and she’s pregnant, so I’ll give her a pass. 

Archie believes he’s headed for a happily ever after with his wife. The reunited couple grabs a bite to eat in the Elizabeth Stoddard Student Center, and Archie gets some spinach stuck in his teeth. Contrasted with a voice-over from Greg that all it takes is “one little thing” to change your life, Katie suddenly realizes that Archie gives her the ick and he’ll always give her the ick. She leaves abruptly, and when Archie tracks her down, whining about how he’s lost Sunny, Katie doesn’t want to hear it. She tells him that she’s realized something important: She doesn’t need him to make her feel special because she already is. This is a Greg lesson, and it’s great parenting, and it finally made it through. The woman wants a divorce so she can live her best life. 

The show frequently underscored how Katie and Greg were in the same boat when it came to letting go of their very hot, very charismatic, very manipulative exes, and now they both seem to be free of the romantic entanglement but inevitably will have to continue to work with them on campus. This might make for a fun dynamic, especially if Archie teams up with Elizabeth at some point. One thing is for sure: Neither of those exes is present at Greg’s going-away party at Art’s later that night. 

The party is the visual and narrative equivalent of one of those whimsical cups of hot chocolate, complete with peppermint straw. It’s warm, it’s cozy-making, and it’s a holiday hug. A light snow falls softly outside the restaurant, the picture window in the front allowing us a peek into the merriment inside. When Greg arrives at Art’s, he thinks he’s just meeting up with Tommy for some fries and a good-bye, but he’s delighted to find that all his friends and students are there. He shares raucous embraces with the students he bonded with, a smooch with Cristle, and several moments with Walt and Dylan. As the night winds down, he gives a heartfelt speech about how he’s loved his time at the college and is sad to be leaving. 

Only he’s not leaving. Katie escorts her dad home and lets him know that she’s done with Archie, once and for all. Greg is ecstatic. She also casually tells him that she doesn’t mind if he stays for another semester. Katie is kind of the queen of late-breaking news to important men in her life, but unlike Archie’s debacle with Sunny, Greg can very easily take back his intent to leave. So he does. He gets to keep his newfound friends, his job, and his proximity to his beloved daughter. I’m loving this for Greg, and I’m loving this for Steve Carell. The center of an ensemble sitcom is where he belongs. 

It’s been a blast recapping this season of Rooster, and I hope to be back next semester. Thank you all for reading! In the meantime, you can find me selling my old textbooks back for pennies on the dollar at the bookstore and shouting about what an absolute scam textbooks are.

Office Hours

• It feels very odd to have a Christmas episode air in late spring. I kind of wish this entire season had capitalized on the vibe of the seasons and debuted this past fall instead. However, given that season two will probably take place during the second semester at Ludlow, we can hope that it’ll premiere around the same time next year to take advantage of the seasonal symbiosis. 

• At Greg’s good-bye party, he thanks two previously unseen people for “all the hot chocolates.” The brief but indelible introduction of these impeccably styled characters leads me to believe there were scenes filmed in the hot-chocolate shop that somehow landed on the cutting-room floor. If so, give me the hot-chocolate cut! 

• This exchange between Tommy and Greg: “You changed my life.” “You changed your life.” I know it’s cheeseball, but Greg and Tommy’s friendship/mentorship/found-family situation made my heart grow three sizes. Maximo Salas’s sweet persona continues to radiate off the screen, and I hope we see him in more stuff soon. 

• Greg has a new female-centric book with a terrible cover (don’t judge a book by its cover, y’all), and even Ronnie has to admit it’s not that bad. Will this propel him into a new market? 

• When is Katie going to hide the cock?!