Page 28

Always One More

Marsh opens her eyes slowly, both hesitant and excited to see what new possible future is laid out before her this time.

This one will be it, she tells herself.

And if not this one, then the next one will be.

Or the one after that.

There are infinite paths inside the Bubble, and all she needs is one perfect life by the finale. How hard could that be, to find just one?

She tries everything, because she can. Marsh is an haute couture fashion designer, a painter in Paris, a senator, a wine vineyard owner. Her faithful cast follows her through every life: Victor always her boss, Jo always her colleague, Harper always her daughter, Ren always her partner. The scenery changes so quickly, it’s like reading a pop-out flip book, where from every page springs a new cardboard cutout. None of them can tell except for Marsh, although there are more strange contradictions—Victor and Jo lose themselves in conversations, or appear wearing suits and holding court papers when they should be clad in park ranger uniforms or carrying firemen’s gear, and Harper keeps talking about the violin and then getting confused, even though with every new scenario, she has a different area of musical expertise. Sometimes the background flickers, replacing itself with a new environment that makes no sense, then flickers back again.

Ren bears the brunt of it, though. Out of all of them, he changes the most each time, morphing into some updated incarnation based on the previous episode, edging ever closer to Marsh’s ideal man. He seems downright exhausted, at times—maybe because of all the transformations he’s being put through, even if he doesn’t know it.

Still, Marsh can’t stop. It’s simply too addicting.

A marine biologist. A world-renowned sculptor. An architect for the first permanent moon base.

Notamackerel: Marsh is losing control of her own show! How many lives is she going to try?

Moms4Marsh: As many as she needs to find the perfect one!

Marsh nods. That’s right. Every new life is close, nearly right, but not exactly so. It amazes her now to think that at midseason, she almost thought she was close to done. Her life has become a thousand times better since then—she’s ambitious and successful at whatever job she tries, her love life is blossoming, her makeover and her new closeness with her daughter have stuck around past the next commercial break—far more than she ever could have hoped for.

But the more places she visits in this montage episode, the more things she tries, Marsh starts to really understand what this show is all about.

Her family, her career—heck, even her bold new personality and style... those things are the big pieces. The broad strokes.

But broad strokes only do not make a masterpiece.

They don’t make perfect .

And that’s what Marsh is here for.

She won’t rest until she gets it.

It seems ungrateful at first, to discard a path for a mere detail. But didn’t Talia tell her that nothing, no matter how small, is out of reach on All This and More ?

She leaves one life because the house isn’t big enough, and the one after because it’s monstrously big. Another time, it’s because of the wrong city; the next, the wrong job. Once, Harper seems bored, then the weather isn’t good. Then Marsh doesn’t like her hair.

Each time, it gets a little easier.

“Sorry, can we cut?” she asks, as she stands at the edge of a hot air balloon’s basket, gazing out over the gorgeous, golden Serengeti. The swelling music cuts off abruptly. “I just—I really want to be able to enjoy this moment, and the light was kind of in my eyes. Can we redo it?”

“Absolutely,” Talia says, and gives the burner a little more gas to lift them back to their original position again, before the close-up started. The zebras seem to also turn around, to head back to where the herd was before they started galloping.

The Serengeti is incredible, and so is the romantic, candlelit dinner Ren has prepared for them in their luxury safari tent later that evening. Although she wishes it had been a pasta dish, not a salad. That there had been a few more candles, and that Ren’s hair had been a little longer and more touchable.

And that hints of Chrysalis would stop popping up at the periphery of every other scene.

A path in which she’s a famous author lasts for half a day, a life as a white water rafter for an hour. At a break in the river, Marsh sets down her paddle and waves away a butterfly, more forcefully than she ordinarily would if it had been just an insect and not a strange saboteur, doggedly pursuing her across the quantum universe.

“You know, this is great, but I feel like Ren’s footwork wasn’t quite as snappy as it could be,” she says as they hand her a trophy for first place in the national ballroom dancing championship. “Do you think it’s worth redoing?”

“We can do anything you want, Marsh!” Behind her graceful posture, it’s clear that even the world’s most unflappable host is exhausted, although she’d never admit it. “Or, something else! There are millions of lives here in the Bubble.”

Talia’s right, that there may be nearly infinite paths for her to try, and infinite details to tweak, but in the back of her mind, Marsh knows there’s a limit to it. She might be able to keep going forever if it were just up to her, but it’s not. It’s about her happiness, but also about episodes. And there are only two of them left before the finale.

She has to pick something eventually.

Things go fuzzy around the edges as the Bubble prepares to shift to somewhere new yet again, and Marsh grins.

But not yet.