ANATOMY of the HUG

in real life i'm probably the last person anyone would expect to have a page dedicated to hugs. i'm the most contact-averse person most people know and i have a reputation for it. i love the pressure but i hate the other-people factor. i'm basically the ideal candidate to own one of the temple grandin cow squeezing machines. but, against all odds, i find hugs in my little shows to be both incredibly endearing and also one of the most emotionally versatile acts as narrative devices. they’re ubiquitous, easily applicable to any kind of relationship, and less uncomfortable than kissing scenes by degrees of magnitude. i am fascinated by them. this is definitely amplified by the value i personally assign hugs in my real life.

this isn't meant to be any sort of serious analysis of these scenes, just a little collection of some of the ones that have left an impression and my silly little ramblings. i hope you enjoy.

* images may contain spoilers. view at your discretion. spoiler text is blurred

dot & gator, fargo

pack it up boys they've concoted the perfect doomed siblings. we are at bon defcon one made-for-me-in-a-lab catnip. i'm going to rewatch this someday and bawl my eyes out but for now i just sit here with these images burned into my brain and a glazed over look on my face.

josh and alan, please like me

this hug actually wrecked me and i watched it multiple times over the course of the week after i finished the series. i don't want to give context because it's at the end of the show and i believe that in order to fully feel it you have to watch the entire thing. sorry. just know that i cried several times in a row over this scene and its one of my favorite hugs of all time... a little microcosm of inordinate pain & allconsuming devastation.

nick & jess, new girl

what is wrong with them (affectionate).

silco & jinx, arcane

this relationship messed me up in a very real way when the show first came out... can't believe i only recently realized i could add them here LAWL! ill forever be susceptible to parentdaughter hugs they are the lights of my life.

irving & felicity, severance

okay yes i finally started severance..... its taking me out i will nawt lie. IRVING B. crying face emoji.... he has a lot of good hugs but i like this one the best because it's with a lady who doesn't really like him at the start of the show but they bond over their shared love of burt... so truuueee

ella and tom, please like me

that was the hardest thing i've ever had to do!

sugar and her uncle (i think), the bear / marcus and a stranger, the bear

sugar's hug is very much a compression calm down kind of a thing which i really like seeing on tv. theres something really grounding about them especially in the middle of that episode which was... really really stressful. i'm intrigued by the stranger hugging marcus. the whole scene lasts about two minutes and in that span, marcus saves this man from where he fell on his bike into barbed wire(?). the guy only speaks danish and so you really dont get any sense of what's happening but he goes up and hugs marcus for a long time. its a really weird and intense moment i guess that stands apart from the rest of marcus's episode (which is mostly just having fun being silly hanging out with the pastry guy). it's a little bit jarring but just like sugar's scene, the hug helps slow it down and ground it. spectacular use of hugs 10/10 no notes.

levi and azi, scavenger's reign

actually insane scene okay. imagine hugging a robot. i am obsessed with azi's arc in relation to her mistrust of levi -> levi's anomalous behaviors being what saves her and their very real emotional attachment made even more concrete by the fact that levi is now essentially a functionally organic being that has been adopted by the world that is repeatedly hostile to azi. there are real thoughts here to unpack but mostly i'm just obsessed with their relationship i love them so much i love how much azi ends up loving levi.

hari seldon and gaal dornick, foundation

i'm a huge jared harris fan; he's pretty much the only reason i stuck foundation out (i find it extraordinarily boring and a bit full of itself). his acting is phenomonal and i love his and gaal's "bonded math professor/math student" foundfamily dynamic. he and gaal are the two most compelling characters of the show and i wish they had more time to develop together. i think i'm especially taken by these scenes because they have such a fraught yet loving relationship. hari is volatile and his decisions are difficult to understand but he's still there for gaal.

gideon and jesse gemstone, the righteous gemstones

here's another expectation-bending scene that always gets me soooo bad like it takes me out so quickly every time. the context is that jesse [the father] did something wrong (objectively) and in doing so, pushed his son away. their entire emotional subplot is jesse's resentment of gideon for running away bubbling up in strange and cruel ways. eventually, towards the end of the season, jesse actually takes accountability and apologizes for what he did to push gideon away. a father apologizing for something that's his fault? it couldnt be... probably projecting a bit too much on this one but it makes me cry and i so appreciate this father/son relationship. it's a very warm and real scene in the midst of a bunch of goofy drama.

tahani and camila al-jamil, the good place

this is actually a scene that makes me cry pretty much every time i watch the episode. i dont know something about sibling reconciliation really gets to me especially the dynamic that these two have where they are just SO reticent to accept an apology from the other. it's such an interesting dynamic to have, where they've been raised to compete and thrive on their resenment of one another, but they ultimately come to terms with the fact that they need each other and aren't being forced into competition anymore and they can choose to support and love each other despite how they were raised. Sniffles.

newt and hermann, pacific rim (2013) (and uprising)

CLENCHES MY TEETH. they actually hug fully in the first movie right before the arm over shoulder scene but its hidden by TENDO JUST STANDING THERE. its okay though this is the next best thing and it was still so sweet. they deserved better. something something even though uprising sucked i love seeing hermann grab newt and hold him its such character development from the reticent and intimacy (even platonic) -averse guy we see in the first movie. maybe one of the best scenes of the entire second movie. it was barely earned and it's sort of out of pocket but STILL!

lupe and esti, a league of their own (2022)

my girlies.... idk their relationship is so fraught so this was a really cute scene. i dont really have a lot of thoughts about it i just really like these shots and the moment was very moving. i love lupe with all my heart and i think they both acted their little hearts out so like. yeah. its also a really cute and not oft seen faux mother/daughter relationship. generally in media the faux/adopted father/child relationships are emphasized on account of (in my opinion) how men generally aren't expected to parent or CHOOSE to parent a child that isn't their own voluntarily whereas women are expected to be caretakers no matter what. so it is interesting that lupe, a more masculine, perhaps less stereotypically affectionate woman becomes a sort of reticent mother figure to esti, similar to media like the mandalorian/arcane/etc where it is the men in that position. i think it is really nice.

mariner and t'lyn, star trek: lower decks / rutherford & tendi star trek: lower decks

i will eventually have a page dedicated to lower decks, probably. i love t'lyn with my entire heart, she's the most autistic vulcan i've ever seen. she also only lets mariner hug her which is cute. i love tendi and rutherford's friendship and i love that her leaving for her sister's ship is with a hug and not the typical love confession. smiles.

valery legasov and boris shcherbina, chernobyl / charlie and rahim, the swarm

1) another jared harris scene that literally refuses to exit my mind THANKS A LOT. chernobyl is so touching in terms of valery's/boris' friendship it kills me but ij ust love them hugging there... framed by the wires in a ruined building.. celebrating a robot not getting radioactively fried...

2) the swarm is also insane to me i love it so much i love charlie and rahim's relationship as friends and colleagues. also i miss jess i need a hug too.

tina and sydney, the bear / sydney and her dad, the bear

these are both very mentor/mentee hugs which i like.. tina being so happy syd is asking more of her and believing in her.. syd being grateful her dad finally understands her ambition to be a good chef. the bear has a lot of hugs of gratitude which i love. ways of showing thanks. the tinasyd hug is extra special cute because she lifts her off the ground you should watch it immediately.

goodsir and collins, the terror / goodsir and silna, the terror

the goodsir hugs are the best hugs in the world actually even though theyre all so miserable and sad in context rip... the collins goodsir hug is important to me because i don't think shows are generally very honest about male mental health, ESPECIALLY in this time period, and the fact that sweet and gentle goodsir holds collins who has admitted to struggling is just SOOO. RUGUGH. then there's silna and she's not really hugging him just holding him but i dont know its such a comforting image.

ursula and azi, scavenger's reign

something something they aren't even really shown to be particularly close even on the demeter and yet azi runs and hugs ursula after being freed by her which is especially interesting considering how emotionally unavailable or at least reticent towards her other relationships she seems to be. the comfort is tangible even in animated form and it just obliterates me every time.

mulder and scully, the x-files

read this PLEASE⤴ just such a good take on the mulderscully hug timeline. theyre recently becoming more important to me i wish them all the best forever. people talk about how revolutionary their relationship was, not because they were queer but because mulder was the first man to care about a woman's opinion on television. anyway their hugs run the gamut in terms of context (traumatized hugs and happy hugs alike) which i enjoy. not just romantic or platonic but a secret third thing (hugs as a gesture of almost familial intimacy )

mako and raleigh, pacific rim (2013)

anyway lol.Explodes. i think this is such a well acted scene like theres real and true emotion in makos face. im not really usually a fan of the very vanilla action romances but this hug does get to me. youd think after this they wouldnt have written raleigh out of the second movie. lol.

madeleine and pauline, the crime is mine (2023)

most normal girl best friendship in the entire world i guess. i think that the writers were cowards for not letting them be girlfriends. ill die mad! moving on. (p.s. i wrote a review of this one in my medialog if you're interested)

josh and ella/arnold and tom, please like me

although the context of these hugs are also really sad, i love that the usual groups are broken up. it's generally a given that the best friend would go to comfort the main character, but by having ella go comfort him instead it really cements her place in the group. she is no longer an onlooker, now a participant. i think its an interesting moment that delinates her relationship with josh as "on tom's level" i guess.

malcolm and reese (and dewey), malcolm in the middle

my favorite awkward sibling hugs. they make me giggle. they perfectly encapsulate how weird it is to hug your siblings if you aren't really close or from an affectionate family. i think the second one is so well placed to highlight how much malcolm and dewey missed reese and how bad malcolm feels for making him run away in the first place. this is not commonplace and that's why it's so important. i love u 4ever malcolm in the middle