Last night’s fourth episode of the Red Band Society touched on a subject we’ve talked about a lot lately — pity.
The way we see it, it’s more than alright to have your own personal pity party once in a while. Sit in your sadness, eat too much bad food and let out a good cry.
It’s a whole other ball game though if you’re being pitied or treated differently simply because of something that’s happened to you.
In last night’s episode, “There’s No Place Like Homecoming,” Cara thought she was going to be walking into a high school she once ruled and instead she walked into a school, and a student body, who viewed her as a charity case. Her fellow cheerleaders took the opportunity to attempt to make a very public demonstration of stripping Cara of all her faults (which she has many) and all her good traits (which we’re still attempting to find). They wanted Cara to just be the body representing a heart disease.
Cara felt like absolute crap when she found out this was going to happen. It didn’t help that she was crowned Homecoming Queen simply because of this. What did help was when Leo stepped up and took one for the team.
In order to help Cara regain her humanity Leo cursed her out in front of the entire dance. (Typical Red Band Society Code of Ethics, amiright?) What Leo probably didn’t expect was for Cara to kiss him, especially because he was technically there with Emma and this just about moved him more into the friend zone than anything else possibly could.
What did come from this was a really powerfully line said by Leo to Emma,
“No one deserves to be pitied.”
He’s right. In a world where a lot of crap happens to us, we don’t need others defining us by just one thing. Empathizing with someone is more than alright, but when that empathy turns into pity a little bit of the other person’s humanity goes with it. And, no one deserves that.
Photo: Red Band Society Facebook
