The Conners Review: An Old Dog, New Tricks and a Ticket to Ride/A Fast Car, a Sudden Loss, and a Slow Decline (Season 3 Episodes 15 and 16)

This show is at its best when the family dives into the meat of their problems. This is exactly what The Conners Season 3 Episode 15, “An Old Dog, New Tricks and a Ticket to Ride,” and The Conners Season 3 Episode 16, “A Fast Car, a Sudden Loss, and a Slow Decline,” executes perfectly.

Watching as Becky slowly declines back into her drinking ways is a sad thing to witness, but a completely necessary story to explore with her. As viewers know, her original sobriety only came about because she was pregnant with Beverly Rose. 

With addictions such as alcohol, it’s an easy thing to fall back into old habits. With Becky taking one drink of wine in the previous episode the future progression of her disease was evident. 

The Conners does a fantastic job of exploring how people don’t always fall off the wagon all at once — sometimes it is a slow fall into the all-consuming addiction. It’s disappointing to see Becky go from being on top of the world and doing wonderful things for her and Beverly Rose to the bottom of the barrel.

She is trying so hard, but like Jackie and Dan both tell her, she can’t do it alone. Becky making the conscious choice to check herself into rehab is what is best for Beverly Rose in the long run.

What’s unfortunate is that now Becky is getting help for her mental issues, Darlene’s own struggles have to take a back burner. This is going to blow up in the whole family’s face sooner rather than later.

Darlene is the glue holding this family together, but even glue fails sometimes, books fall apart. Darlene really needs that trip to Hawaii for her own mental stability.

Yes, Ben is correct in saying that the family could really use the money from the tickets to pay off some bills. However, he is failing to see that if Darlene’s mental health takes a nose dive it’s going to be even longer before they start a life together, not shorter.

I love Ben and I do believe he is the correct man for Darlene, but his inability to see past his desires for them to really be together is only going to hurt him in the end. It’s already evident from Darlene’s face during their conversation that she is sacrificing for him again.

These sacrifices for the family are what dragged Darlene to the brink just a short while ago. This family really needs to get their heads on straight and realize that Becky isn’t the only one who needs help. 

Dan and Jackie are so aware of Becky’s alcoholic struggles but fail to see that Darlene is taking on too much, and she is ten seconds from disaster herself. The only difference is Darlene’s spiral may be more detrimental overall than Becky’s drinking problem currently is. 

What the Conner family still struggles to understand is that financial struggles are a huge factor in their lives, but their mental health is too. Darlene isn’t any better than her family is at recognizing exactly what she needs. 

The Conners successfully uses the return of Molly to facilitate Darlene’s realization of her failing mental health. Molly is a great character to wake Darlene up and show her that being selfish every once in a while isn’t a bad thing.

Ever since her mom died, Darlene has taken on all the responsibility of her family with little to no reward in exchange. Darlene deserves a night out every once in a while it’s just a shame her own family chastises her every time she does it. 

The Conner clan is really going to need a sharp left turn or even a full 180 turnaround if they want to survive this latest set of struggles. It’ll be interesting to see if Darlene finally stands up for her needs ahead of her family’s.

What did you think of these episodes of The Conners? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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The Conners airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on ABC.

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