YES, god, that dab. i was watching that with like an anticipation for a fight with the mom or something so i was like very serious. and she dabbed, and believe me when i say i cHOKED my way into laughing! this show, man, is so ridiculous in a very endearing way.
Right, it was like, oh, this is gonna be uncomfortable, and a little scary, just how mad is she, and then
EVERY SINGLE TIME I see it I start laughing. It’s so random and half-hearted and dumb. Lord, Sterling.
What moment do you think April caught/ re caught feelings for Sterling? Or was it just like lingering under the surface repressed?
And other anons:
Hey, do you think April already had a secret crush on Sterling? Or she became attracted when Sterling kissed her?
Did April like Sterling when she was being mean to her early on?
Do you think April had a crush on Sterling? I think Sterling might have had one on April (if maybe subconsciously) when they were younger if only because in the scenes where they’re reminiscing on their childhood Sterling seems to remember little details that even April is surprised she remembers
Hmmm. That is the big question, right, was Sterling one of the Adeles, and if so, did it ever go away and if it did, when did it come roaring back?
I don’t know what the show’s version of the timeline would be, I’m not even entirely sure of my own thoughts, but here would be my current feelings:
In the first few eps, there’s a genuine resentment from April toward Sterling, for the reasons I mentioned earlier and obviously the 5th grade thing. Mixed up with all that was probably also a buried attraction, Sterling’s pretty, but she’s also a good enough student to be an actual rival and on some level that’s something April responds to. April also seems strong-minded enough to appreciate how principled Sterling is, except it makes her even more resentful, thinking it’s fake.
So you enter ep 6 with this swirling maelstrom. teen hormones, resentment past and present, having to suppress any gay feelings, probably hiding them from even herself, the recent agitation of her father’s situation and the resulting social humiliation. I don’t think she’d like, been sitting there examining her feelings and being like, omg, I have a crush, damn, I wish I didn’t have this crush on this snake, I think she just had complicated messy feelings about Sterling, former friend and current rival, who can hold her own against her but also keeps reaching out and being nice. And then it all comes to a head at the competition, where she’s actually teaming up with her, having to think of her as an ally (if grudging), and then the 5th Grade Betrayal comes up again and Sterling seems to genuinely have no idea about it and immediately and earnestly wants to apologize. When Sterling refused to use the info against Craig, April was furious in the moment but I think that really was when everything really changed.
She’s yelling at Sterling, right, angry at her and also at herself for trusting her to do this and being hurt again and you can see that moment where she catches herself and pulls back:
As much as we (understandably!) talk about Sterling’s reaction here, April was having a Moment of her own. I mean, don’t think she went home and had a Clueless fountains realization, I’m in love with Sterling Wesley, but I think she did realize she’d been overreacting, over a lot of things, as she said in 1×08, her anger had been “misdirected”, and that might even mean that Sterling had been an Adele. But now the realization gave her a lot of room to think about Sterling’s good qualities without always stopping short because of the bad (or what she thought were bad). Because with everything else, refusing to use that info against Craig was actually super admirable.
I think a lot of Sterling’s flirting over their project actually DID get a response from April, the way she grudgingly admitted she didn’t think Luke was right for Sterling, the whole conversation about Naomi and Ruth with her confused about Sterling’s motives but also curious in so many ways about her thoughts on it. At that stage and with the specific complexity of this situation, it’s hard to really define it, I don’t think she was in a place where she had fully decided her feelings and was just waiting for a sign to act on them, I think even then she was ready to remain alone for the whole of high school, at the very least, buuuut, to answer all your questions, I think she absolutely did have increasingly positive and warm feelings about Sterling at that point, maybe some wistful what-ifs, and then the kiss opened up a whole world of possibilities.
That’s an interesting observation, last anon, about Sterling having a thing for April and that’s why she remembered things like what she’d quoted to Luke. It’s definitely possible, I do think she has a great memory in general and can probably quote all kinds of stories like that, but that was SO specific. i do agree, though, if it was there, it was subconscious.
I JUST finished watching TBH and omg that cliffhanger :0 I really wonder how Sterling’s story is going to go for next season? (Really hoping they get a season 2!!) April once said Sterling always got her way or at least that’s how it looked like to her but now things have been flipped and she’s probably at her lowest point so I wonder how that’s going to affect her in terms of not just her relationships but also her personality…
Haha, yes, that cliffhanger! They really did pile EVERYTHING on her in that finale and I do very much hope we get at least one more season to round off all these major revelations and storylines.
April’s not wrong, tbh, Sterling had been leading a CHARMED ass life until this point. When you compare them, Sterling’s got a twin sister she really gets along with, kind parents, a loving bf, everyone seems to like her no matter what, she does well academically, while April’s stuck there already being an intense and competitive kid and just made worse by the realization she’s gay and the wall she’d had to put up because of that. She has no real friends, just lackeys, and however close she was to her dad before, she still knew how homophobic he was and had to protect herself from that. And at the time, it was funny, but remember how when Sterling was straight up confessing that she and Luke had sex, EVEN THEN that somehow turned on April. I kind of loved that after the twins started the rumors and April caught on and zeroed in on Sterling, they put a freaking halo around her:
And April knows that on this one, she’s absolutely the one in the right. I can WELL understand her frustration and resentment and wonder if that wasn’t also a part of how much the rift grew.
But anyway, ouch, all that seems like it was setting up the harshest of falls. Now she’s lost everything, the only thing that didn’t happen was being outed. Getting dumped, then kidnapped, by the “aunt” your mom’s lied to you about for your whole life, at gunpoint, tied up, and then worst of all, no twin, wrong parents, charmed life gone. I don’t know, man, where’s she gonna go from there? Who’s she gonna live with–whose car is she going to get into to leave the junkyard, to start with? And you know, I mentioned April not really having friends, but Sterling doesn’t either, outside Blair. Is she gonna avoid her? But then she wouldn’t have anybody to talk to and the show kind of needs her to process this and show us her reactions. Maybe they’ll get her a therapist? She definitely needs one! With this show’s track record, she’ll probably vent by telling Ellen everything in the first minute of season 2.
I don’t know, she’s such a sweetheart, she may just go quiet but seemingly be okay with things only to explode later, instead of getting angry at her parents–at the Wesleys–right off the bat. She may visit Dana in prison, that’ll open up some storylines. I’m not sure if it’ll be made public, even if people know who Dana is, it doesn’t have to be revealed that she’s Sterling’s mom. But however it goes, however tough it all is, it’ll be a period of growth for her in the end, she’ll get through it and she and Blair will come out stronger, that’s just the show. But I don’t really know how those first eps will go, especially with juggling Luke and April and April’s dad and the bounty hunting.
But you know, this is one of the things I SUPER love about having central wlw characters, where that becomes part of the main arc. And in fact, for this show, with its strong religious themes, I mentioned this before too, but the show is literally better off for including this very relevant nuanced plot point for these particular characters and for providing this super organic reason for why Sterling would keep a secret from Blair and actually choose to hang out with someone else. This isn’t tokenism or trying to think of what to do with a character but built into the actual storyline. It’s something that’s a major part of her and will affect and be affected by all the other major storylines. It could be that April ends up being the confidante, although she may have even more reason to choose the “easy” safe option Luke is. We’ll see, I hope!