A MILLION LITTLE THINGS Post-Mortem: James Roday Rodriguez Breaks Down Gary’s Unexpected Closure

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Wednesday, December 1 episode, “the things we keep inside.”]

Gary (James Roday Rodriguez) got an unexpected surprise on the winter finale for A MILLION LITTLE THINGS, when Liam (Mattia Castrillo) showed up at his doorsteps.

Though Gary hadn’t seen Liam in months—since Gary’s split with Darcy (Floriana Lima)—the young man ran away from home, upset about their estrangement. When Liam’s father came to pick him up, Stephen revealed the now-pregnant Darcy was on bedrest…following a fall Liam blamed on himself.

The time together allowed Gary to shut the door on the life he almost had (which was cut short thanks to his attack on Peter), and allowed him to potentially walk through another door: Maggie (Allison Miller) decided to go on a road trip to have face time with her stalker, AKA the distraught mother of a patient who killed themselves, and invited Gary to join her.

Here, Roday Rodriguez breaks down Gary’s big hour with “the things we keep inside,” and weighs in on Gary and Maggie potentially reuniting…

How do you think this closure with Liam might impact Gary going forward?
Closure, while painful, generally can be a pretty positive thing for us human beings. I think a lot of times we hang on to stuff for way too long. We think that a closed door can often be reopened well beyond when it’s slammed shut, locked, and cement blocks are put on the other side.

So, I’d like to think that while it may be a bit of a gut punch, in order to move on and truly accept the reality that he made some serious mistakes and those mistakes come with very serious consequences, something like this episode with Liam coming back is a good thing. One, he gets to see his little pal one more time. Two, he gets a glimpse into what that life is going to look like without him and recognize that Stephen is a good dude, who loves his son, and he wants it to work. And is probably better suited for Darcy than Gary was. And these are painful things, but I think important things for him to see so that he can actually leave it behind, and try to be proactive and get on with his life, whatever that means, in this world.

Is there a world in which you think he could keep in any kind of contact with Liam?
I think it’s probably best at this point for Gary to just stop, you know? Just stop it, dude. Like, yeah, we get it. You bond with kids probably better than you bond with adults. But you’ve also managed to disappoint two of them on an epic scale. So maybe you need to stop. Hit the pause button. Look inward, do the work, and focus on yourself for a while. Which is not something that he’s ever been particularly good at doing. I think he tends to measure his worth in terms of what he’s doing for others, but he doesn’t always do the right things for others.

So that’s a broken machine. And it’s not going to fix itself. So, you know, maybe somewhere way down the road if he gets an invite to Liam’s high school graduation, maybe. [Laughs.] But for now, yeah, I think he’s gotta stop and focus on himself and moving forward. His life is not going to be with Darcy and Stephen and Liam.

Looking to the Sophie (Lizzy Greene) of it all, how do you think he is really coping with that loss? And what does he think it might take to get back into her good graces and be able to have a healthy relationship with her?
I think, in some ways, it’s a more painful loss than Darcy was, frankly. Gary has sort of self-anointed himself as the Jon surrogate, the closest thing to a father that Sophie and Danny now have. So to let her down, it’s destroying him on multiple levels, because he also feels like he’s letting his friend down.

And the trust was actually earned. That relationship was very real and very special. And I think Sophie trusted Gary in a way that she has not trusted anyone else in this world, including her own mother. And so she sees what happened as a as an absolute betrayal and so the damage is done, and he can’t do anything about it.

That’s another thing that I think Gary is not particularly great at: he can’t control how she feels or if she ever decides to forgive him. It’s a very deep hole he’s gonna have to dig out. I mean, we saw how long it took for Eddie [to get back on her good side after she learned about his affair with Delilah], and that’s Eddie. And she blamed her mother just as much for that as she blamed Eddie. So this is next level…I think it’ll destroy him for as long as she doesn’t want him in her life. But there also may come a point where the ship has sailed, and he just has to accept that that’s what happens when you break into people’s houses and put bags over their heads and threaten their lives.

Generally not the best of decisions. In your mind, how much is he actively working on his anger in his therapy sessions? Is he conscious that the anger is something that is actually a big problem?
I think there’s a difference between doing the work and telling everybody that you’re doing the work. And I, personally—like, me, James—am always a little bit suspect when I hear people talking about how hard they’re working on themselves.

So I don’t know. I’m not sure what to think yet. We haven’t actually seen him with a therapist. We haven’t heard any of the specifics. I don’t know how seriously he’s taking it. I do think he doesn’t want to keep making these epic mistakes, because the only people he has are the people that come up in opening credits of the show…and he’s already lost two of them. So, I think he does recognize that the measure by which he sort of identifies his own value is in others, and if there are no others, there is no measure. So maybe not the best reason to grow. But I think any reason will have to do at this point.

The episode ended with the door appearing to be both figuratively and literally open for a possible Gary and Maggie reunion. How healthy would that be for them at this moment?
That one’s a tricky one for me. Because on the one hand, I think it would be very easy to sort of diagnose that it’s dysfunctional. He needs to move forward in a real way. He needs to clean the slate, and this is a real opportunity for him to do that.

On the other hand, I, myself, am not a cancer survivor. And so I don’t want to judge or underestimate what that experience is. Especially going through it with someone else who totally gets it and the depths to which a human bond can form. And then add love on top of that. That may be something that’s just bigger than both of them or the show or anything else. And if it’s that kind of a bond, maybe it’s sort of inevitable that it’s not going to work for either of them with these other people that they keep trying to be with, when they know that the other one is still out there. And [the other] knows them in a way that nobody else does.

There’s part of me, that’s like, “Dude, stop. It’s just a piece of paper. It doesn’t mean anything. You need to move forward.” But then there’s another part of me [where] it’s like I sort of understand in a way: That’s the relationship he didn’t want to end in the first place. He felt things he never felt before; so did she. They’re a huge part of the architecture for the show. I think there’s probably a case to be made for why they should and shouldn’t be together.

A MILLION LITTLE THINGS, Wednesdays, 10/9c, ABC

RELATED:

• A MILLION LITTLE THINGS: ‘the things we keep inside’ Photos
• A MILLION LITTLE THINGS: ‘stay’ Photos
• A MILLION LITTLE THINGS: ‘six months later’ Photos
• A MILLION LITTLE THINGS: ‘crystal clear’ Photos
• A MILLION LITTLE THINGS: ‘not the plan’ Photos
• A MILLION LITTLE THINGS Original Series Star Exits
• A MILLION LITTLE THINGS: What You Need to Know About the Season Premiere
• A MILLION LITTLE THINGS Boss DJ Nash Teases the Theme of Season 4
• A MILLION LITTLE THINGS Season 4 Premiere: ‘family first’ Photos
• A MILLION LITTLE THINGS Post-Mortem: DJ Nash Breaks Down that Gut-Wrenching Finale Twist
• A MILLION LITTLE THINGS: DJ Nash and Chance Hurstfield Preview Delilah’s Return, a Big Cliffhanger
• A MILLION LITTLE THINGS Post-Mortem: DJ Nash on Eddie’s Fate and the Season 3 Timeline

Follow @GiveMeMyRemote and @marisaroffman on Twitter for the latest TV news. Connect with other TV fans on GIVE ME MY REMOTE’s official Facebook page.

And be the first to see our exclusive videos by subscribing to our YouTube channel.

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases made through links/ads placed on the site.