how does everybody feel about finally learning the reason for angela's sock obsession? do you believe it? i still have my doubts.. i think angela is secretly building a sock army to take over the world.

but for reals, i'm glad to finally have this question answered this season as well as several other loose ends from season 1.

I love that part, it was probably the best moment of all the episode.

Hahaha, you don't have to spoiler tag that!

Yes, I think that the sock mystery was summed up well. So sweet and touching! It was clear that Angela cared very much for her sister. Too bad Alice didn't stay.

Yeah, that was great.

yeah it is a good explaination, i kinda hoped she was just kinda loopy

That was great! They was tied in great to season one and to her dreams in the limosine. She said she had been dreaming of her sister a lot lately.

Do you think they had this thing with her sister planned since Season 1? If so, incredible. If not, I guess they just randomly had Angela with the socks throughout the course of the series and just randomly decided to connect them with something.

I highly doubt they had that planned this long, but it's irrelevant to the fact that it was interesting to see the character development, and the continuously pressing want to steal some socks.

...for Alice.

No, I don't think it was planned out by the writers from season 1 but I do love how the writers pulled it all together and made the sox stealing into something special.

I was a little surprised that she knew consciously all along what the deal was with the socks. Usually they try to make something like this a deep secret that the person will have some great epiphany and suddenly understand their own motivation.

Very much in agreement. When Young Angela said "Oh... socks! I need to get some for Alice", that was a perfect explanation on its own. Having Angela later just say outright "I've been stealing socks FOR YOU" was pointless and silly, and it's a little upsetting that the writers feel the (unfortunately justified) need to directly explain simple plot points to most of the audience.

This reveal was as brilliant as "call me Noah" from Season 1. I loved it.

And it might have been silly for Angela to say it, but it's been a long time since that question has been around.

It was such a fantastic and touching scene, that I didn't care about silly things like plot points having to be explained, personally.

I don't think there was a great plan since S1, but I thought it worked out perfectly. Such a wonderful scene. Guilt makes us all do crazy things. Though I guess now that Alice is alive, Angela will stop thieving socks?

if she didn't come right out and mention her sock stealing, I'm not sure the average viewer would have connected the 2 incidents that are, in our timeline, years apart...

I think yes - writers when dealing with important characters can get very detailed on their history right at the start. I have characters that I write for every type of instance that I can tell you how they grew up, what happened to them and so on - it goes to coloring the whole character.

It's called writing for TV - that's what you do, you take what you've written over the years and make it make sense as their is NO Way to know everything that you will write years and years ahead of time, you can have an idea, but TV has to be organic.

i loved it when we found out about the socks she's such a caring sister and mother at that too XD

Theres no way this was planned out. Its just creative writing and bravo to the writers for that one. Great job I loved this little easter egg.

More writing like this please. We can fill in plot holes with out creating more and this is proof.

yes and no, you still have to have the strong foundation of soild dimensional character to build a story line on

That's writing for a book, not really for television.

The problem is that Angela, originally (when the sock stealing was first mentioned) was not supposed to be a major character. When they saw how Ms Rose nailed it, and how the audience responded, they gave her star status on the show- which caused a rewrite in the character.

Correct. A book is written and then one goes back and edits and makes it more cohesive, one knows the end and the start.

Aaron Sorkin use to say writing TV was like writing in a tunnel - you can't see the light at the end or it. So the fact that the writers are taking those moments that now have to make sense in the direction of Angela I say Bravo.

As Synch said, she wasn't originally designed to be a long-term character. I think the socks was initially an inocuous item, but when they decided on having Alice come back, they put a conscious effort to add the scene in the back of the car where she's rubbing socks against her cheek, then relate that back to this. And because of that scene, there really wasn't much time between 1961 and the previous sock allusion.

Don't think they went out of their way to explain a plot point at all. There was a huge point to the comment...sounds like you guys just missed it. I think the whole purpose of her comment was to try to convince Alice sister that she'd never forgotten her, that she'd been thinking about Alice all of these years and that Alice still meant a lot to her because whenever times were bad, she did something to remind her of Alice.

I doubt it, because Angela probably feels about as bad about Alice as she ever did in those fifty years. For fifty years, she's been believing that she brought about her sister's death. Now that she's alive, she has to feel responsible for cheating her sister of a life. A woman of over sixty who dresses in hodgepodge hippie garb, steals canned food for a living and reads Alice in Wonderland - that has to be even worse than thinking she died!

This was a good reveal and a nice addition to Genesis if you plan on rewatching it

Alice was fairly coherent for an isolated-crazy, don't you think?

No, I disagree. Alice had isolated herself for 2 reasons. 1. Angela told her to stay there (50 years ago). and 2. to protect the world from herself.

Alice was probably 12 to 14 years old (closer to 12 I would think) at the relocation camp. As a 12 year old she is too literal, overly dependent (don't ever leave me) and egocentric (not selfish). "Say good night Alice." to which Alice responds "Good night Alice". Very literal. She was punished for getting a "F" and in her fit brought a piece of hail that broke the windshield of the car. Alice is possibly autistic or some other learning disability. The point about Alice only bringing toys and a book instead of clothes. My asperger (autism) son did that once. Made for an expensive vacation when we had to go out and purchase 4 set of clothes. Why didn't Alice's sister or parents help Alice pack?

point: Alice even though fairly high functioning still had some type of learning disability that in the early 60's would not have been diagnosed.

Yeah, now that you put it out there, I just thought it for myself. I agree. I havn't observed many autistic children, and I'm by no means an expert in anyway, but I do think she may have had Autism. As an adult, I don't know, probably still Autism, but she had grown to her own world so to her it wasn't that big of a deal I think, inside her head.

I'm talking about 50 years in the future [current timeline] Alice. You think you're going to spend 50 years by yourself and its not going to be detrimental to your mental health? I just think she would've been in a far worse state than they showed her in.

I understood that.
I never said that self induced isolation for 50 years wouldn't leadto detrimental mental health.
My point was that she began with a mental health issue.
If she didn't have this issue, she never would have stayed alone for 50 years. Maybe a year or two but not 50.

I acknowledge your opinion and will not argue that point.

Many times people who become hermits do so because they can do better off away from people due to lack of social skills or having social needs. Alice has social needs but not social skills. I think she would have been a lot worse off if she were forced to be around people who couldn't understand her.

I think they showed that she blamed herself for the deaths of those people. Angela was trying to tell her that it wasn't her fault that those people died. Alice may have chosen to isolate herself because she felt that if she went back to normal society, she would just hurt more people.

I agree with this.

She felt the blame because she was in the middle of it even though it was not her fault.

Well given all the above... I have no idea what this refers to:
My original post was saying just that she had been isolated, not giving reasons why. :| I think we have just crossed our wires maybe? The literal we, not the royal we.

Not sure if you can conclude that. The "Goodnight Alice", to me, sounded like some childhood remnant that might have taken place when Alice was around two or three. It sounded like a family idiolect.

"Goodnight Alice" is referring to the tagline of the Burns and Allen show (which would be remembered in 1961) where upon Burns saying "Say Goodnight, Gracie," she would say "Goodnight, Gracie!" This story is somewhat apocryphal but it was the first thing I thought of when I heard "Say goodnight, Alice!" It's an old joke, and obviously a family joke, as well.