The Conners Review: The Wedding of Dan and Louise (Season 4 Episode 4)

Big events with the Conner clan can never go exactly to plan. However, The Conners Season 4 Episode 4, “The Wedding of Dan and Louise,” still manages to pull everything off in the end.

Between the weather warnings and the alcoholic snafus and the bitter exes, this wedding is going down in Conner history. While it is a very chaotic day in its nature, nothing beats seeing the look on Dan’s face when he sees Louise in her wedding dress for the first time.

He’s like a kid in a candy store that can’t get enough, which we haven’t seen from him in a long time. Dan is well overdue for a great big win in his life — Louise is definitely that. 

Even his kids’ crazy shenanigans can’t bring down Dan’s mood which is a big step forward for him as a father. It shows he still cares but doesn’t allow them to even taint his happy feelings about marrying the woman he loves. He is putting himself first for once. 

Sobriety, Becky. Please remember. 

First things first, we need to talk about Becky. Lately, I have been commending her for the great strides she is making with her sobriety and her rehab. 

Unfortunately, what we thought was a one-off situation during The Conners Season 4 Episode 3, “Sober Sex, Plastic Silverware, and Losing my Religion,” has turned into a disturbing pattern. Having sex with Mikey to keep from thinking about alcohol is the exact reason people are discouraged from starting any new relationships during the first few months of recovery.

Granted, Becky recognized that in the previous episode and yet again after the wedding. However, if her recognizing it wasn’t enough before who’s to say it’s going to be now. 

We want to have faith she’ll do the right thing this time around with regards to relationships and sobriety, but it’s still hard to ignore the warning signs. Also, the writers are known to throw kinks at Becky all the time.

Mikey is a great friend for Becky to have around because he understands she’s in recovery, but he’s also in love with her. As much as I love their friendship, I do believe they need to put some distance between themselves for a bit.

Becky isn’t the only one who needs to put some distance between themselves and a person of the male species. Of course, we are talking about Darlene as well.

The Problem with Ben

To be fair, her lack of distance issue wasn’t because she herself orchestrated it. While Dan’s reasoning behind it is solid and understandable, Ben and Darlene did just break up.

Dan lives with Darlene, he sees how not well she’s been taking the breakup. I think he could’ve had a talk with Ben and they could’ve mutually decided it wasn’t a good idea — no hard feelings on their part. 

Ever since Ben was forced to move in with the Conner family while he was still dating Darlene, he has slowly fallen into being a guy we can’t in good conscience root for. He didn’t treat Darlene fairly and she has every right to be irked by his presence in the wedding party. 

He compares being part of the family to the monetary things he did while they were together. In a way, Ben is completely ignoring how degraded he constantly made her feel by his comments about her family and how much he didn’t want to live with them.

Even now, he makes a comment about there being 20 members to her family. It isn’t a cute comment, it isn’t stating a fact — no Ben is using it to throw poison at Darlene and make her feel terrible for being so connected to her close-knit family. 

Furthermore, Darlene is definitely a bigger person for basically allowing Ben to come back around to spend time with her family all because some of them didn’t get the memo that he’s actually kind of trash. Like, I’m finding it really hard to believe that Mark wouldn’t have picked up on even a few of Ben’s nasty comments over the last few months.

There is that saying about how you don’t divorce everyone when you break up, but Darlene really needs to force him out of her own safe space. Ben can meet up with her kids or hang out with Dan all he wants, but tell him that he needs to do it outside of the home.

Darlene shouldn’t have to sacrifice her own mental well-being because Mark will hate her if she doesn’t allow Ben to come over for movie night anymore. Be the parent Darlene, show Mark that your happiness is just as important as his. 

 

What did you think of this episode 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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