Anyway Mouthwashing Spoilers

Anyway Mouthwashing spoilers

I'm turning Curly over in my head for the narrative punishment he's put through. Like you could you COULD interpret him as a pure victim, framed for Jimmy's crime and forced to suffer in skinless silence while his assailant gets to assume his role but it's more than that, to me. It's not just Jimmy bad Curly good. It's Curly's enablement of Jimmy that sets all of this in motion and, now, how will you take Responsibility, Curly?

It's Curly's "I've known Jimmy a long time. He'll listen to me." It's Curly's brand of leadership that hinges more on being seen as a good leader than on actually taking action. Because being seen as a good leader requires everyone to like him and that's more important to him than actually protecting Anya from Jimmy.

You could say "Jimmy just had everyone fooled into thinking he was a decent guy" except no you can't, because Anya hid the gun from him knowing Jimmy may go ballistic learning she's pregnant with his baby. And she hides the gun because Curly wouldn't. "Why do they have locks on medbay and the cockpit but not in the sleeping quarters?" Anya asks to Curly. Curly knows Jimmy raped Anya but his brand of I Need To Be Liked leadership asserts that Jimmy deserves a seat at the table of this solution. Curly won't do anything. He won't do anything even when he says he'd do anything.

And this is even after Jimmy tore into Curly with left-field accusations about the crew being laid off being something Curly wanted. All the evidence we have says the whole crew is being let go, Curly along with everyone, but Jimmy turns on him and makes it out like Curly wanted this and Curly is the enemy to everyone else on the ship. Curly won't stand up for himself. He won't shut Jimmy down. Swansea holds onto the axe because when locked up the axe requires the Captain to unlock, and maybe Swansea recognizes he's on a ship with a Captain who would not use the axe on the man who needs it.

Curly never wanted anything bad to happen. He never tried to hurt anyone. He never crashed the ship. But he's the one person who could have shut Jimmy down for every horrible sign and action along the way and he didn't he didn't he didn't he didn't. And the very first time he tries to intervene is when it's too little too late. HE gets eviscerated. He gets all his skin burned off. Because of what Jimmy did, but because of what Curly allowed.

And now his chance to act as Captain is gone. His chance to do right is gone. Jimmy is captain now and everyone who knows he's a monster is no longer capable of acting against him. And now skinless voiceless eternally watching, Curly has to lie in his own blood and bear witness to what Jimmy is doing, to everything he enabled. At Jimmy's mercy now like all the others, who physically beats him now and who is there to stand up for Curly? Enable. Enable enable enable.