Healing INner Chld – Station 19 Season 6 Episode 8
You won a race on a sprained ankle and won gold. You can sit with pain, Maya.Diane: Is your wife home?
Maya: She doesn’t live here anymore. I haven’t heard from her since she threw me in the looney bin.
The path to healing is a beautiful thing to witness.
We got an infinitely better balanced and toned hour with Station 19 Season 6 Episode 8, and it didn’t disappoint with strong performances by the series’ women yet again.
The long-awaited progress for Maya kickstarted with Diane’s return, and it was beautiful work by both Savre and Thoms.
Maya’s ongoing battle with her trauma and the ramifications of it on her life has been an ongoing and brutal storyline in the series for some time.
It was unbearable to witness as every second we thought she reached rock bottom, she and circumstance would somehow find a trap door.
But now, we’re on the pathway toward getting on the other side of it, and while Maya still has a long way to go, the payoff is very much welcome.
The only criticism, if there is one, about the execution of the arc is that they’re expediting the healing and progress, with Maya readily accepting Diane’s help after an endless descent.
Even within the installment, Maya went from still livid that she had to speak to Diane after Carina placed her on a 51/50 hold to opening her mind to everything that Diane presented to her and welcoming multiple therapy sessions in the future.
It was a quick change-up, which feels like they’re aware of how long they dragged on Maya’s dark period and want to jump into the next phase as quickly as possible to devote time to the healing.
The hour appeared to take care with how they wanted to depict Maya’s steps toward breakthrough and Diane’s methodology as a therapist.
You could sense that some research was involved with techniques and how to portray them. And as a result, it strengthened those scenes.
But, more than anything, the performances genuinely knocked everything out of the park. Savre did some incredible work during this installment and deserved her accolades.
Depicting someone as complicated as Maya at such a rough point in her life takes some serious talent and work, mainly to produce something raw and compelling.
Maya has been through it, and it showed up all over her face, from the lack of sleep to the sunken, dull light missing from her eyes; we could feel the place Maya was in, which wasn’t good.
There was some great cinematography and direction during this installment, which really shone through in those scenes with Maya in her apartment.
Diane has such a calm and effective presence, and it wasn’t long before she tapped into something for Maya. It was all she needed to chip through Maya’s protective exterior; it was an emotional ride from that moment forward.
We already knew the source and root of Maya’s problems had been linked to her father and how he made her feel. And Diane got Maya to tie that to her dogged pursuit of winning and how she equates it to her worth.
If she doesn’t win all the time, she’s not worthy, and if she’s not worthy, she’s not lovable, and it’s been a constant cycle of that for the entirety of Maya’s life.
And she could trace that back to her three-year-old self witnessing her father dole out and then withhold his love and respect for her cousin based on whether or not she won a race.
Maya internalized that and knew she couldn’t have her father’s love unless she won and he saw her as worthy. And she spent the entirety of her life chasing after that type of validation.
Initially, when things started to get too emotionally painful for Maya, she wanted to detract from it with her need for meds to treat her injury. But then Diane helped her see that even that was rooted in her emotional pain more than any physical kind.