Previously: Ana nearly gets raped, and Christian Greatest Boyfriend Evaaa Grey blames it on her! Then they have makeup sex in the newly renamed Red Womb of Domestic Violence and Ana decided that her blowjob skillz made her omniscient.
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Sweeney: The chapter begins with morning sex of the truly unsexy variety we have come to expect from these books. Grey is complaining about the fact that he has to use a condom and is also annoyed with her for giggling and ominously fucks her out of her giggling problem. We have our own little continuum of feelings from these books — “blind rage” to “all the lolz.” The center is a general “ew” zone. Right now I’m somewhere between rage and general ew.
Right about there.
Lorraine: (1) – I love you and I think I’m going to print this out. I love that Snarky-face. (2) – When we do these recaps, the main recapper’s job is usually to be all, “look at this overview of shit. The umbrella of shit, if you will.” Then the secondary recapper’s role is to be all, “look at the shitty minutia. The raindrops of shit, if you will.”
So, here’s this:
“He’s smiling down at me- his dazzling, all-American-drop-dead-male-model-perfect-teeth smile.”
Drop dead, male model? HOKAY.
Sweeney: ZOMBIE MODELS. HAWT.
Anyway, the “there-is-no-laughter-in-Christian-Grey’s-house-of-doom” fuck is a fade to black and we cut to the kitchen where Ana’s boo-hooing about her millionaire boyfriend wanting to take her shopping and wondering what will happen at work, what with her megadouche boss being fired for attempting to rape the boss’s boss’s boss. She muses about wanting a female replacement, so that her psychotic boyfriend will calm the fuck down. He finds this hilarious, and I groan, because he’s obviously laughing because he’s promoted her in his Monopoly company.
They head down to the garage where daddy’s going to show her how to drive her new car because he’s finally going to let her drive it to work! Truly, this scene has an intense daddy/daughter read to it. Coupled with the sex scene from the previous page, I’d almost swear they were from Westeros, except that they have no other redeeming qualities and would have their faces murdered off by anyone in Westeros, including fucking Samwell.
Lor: He would definitely be all, “Well I learned how to murder people in a book.”
Sweeney: He would! So true!
Grey shows her the funny ignition placement in this car (I had to Google it; Saab ignitions are just below the gear shift) and won’t let her listen to music because it will disrupt her concentration. I’M NOT EVEN SNARKING ADDED PATERNAL UNDERTONES. Actual things!
Ana’s inner monologue notes the creepy father vibe and decides that she’d rather he be a kinky husband than a father, which is a totally normal segue. He admonishes her lack of concentration again and she lies that she’s thinking about work. An obvious lie, really, because bitch never thinks about work.
Grey assures her that she’ll be fine and she repeats her, “Hey, it’d be cool if you’d not interfere with my job!” thing, which just makes him go silent. Since we just had a whole paragraph of actually acknowledging that she has a job, it’s time to get back to their relationship and how EPIC last night was, and how they can’t stand the thought of parting to go to work because they aren’t fully developed characters, leaving them incapable of functioning independently.
Lor: Last night was heaven, she says, and it took me a moment to remember, “oh yeah. Sexy times.” and not the part where she was almost attacked by her boss hours before. Totally the best night ever though!
Sweeney: I was so annoyed with more of their morning chat about how the previous night was THE BEST NIGHT EVER (Every single morning, guys. They have this conversation every morning!) that it didn’t even occur to me how exceptionally inappropriate that was on this morning. Last chapter I congratulated myself on being not quite ruined. NOPE. SORRY. RUINED. -_-
Grey reminds Ana that they are meeting with his therapist after she leaves work that day. And then! We move more in the direction of epic UGH on the feel-continuum. He frets about whether or not she’ll leave him, because we have to have this conversation at least four times per chapter. I mean, how many times can we point out that your boyfriend fearing all interactions between you and his therapist is a bit of a red flag? Answer: nowhere near as many times as they can go around this same circle.
“Christian, how many times do I have to tell you—I’m not going anywhere. You’ve already told me the worst. I’m not leaving you.”
Yes, Ana, we need to stop having this stupid fucking conversation.
Blah, blah, more repetitive bullshit. Grey wants to know, if she’s not going to leave him, why won’t she just agree to marry him? Christian Grey really knows romance and also if you’re not going to break up with your boyfriend of five weeks, it’s probably time to put a ring on it, amirite?
Now it’s time for Ana to repeat her annoying end of this conversation. It has nothing to do with the fact that they’ve only known each other for a hot minute, but because she doesn’t know if she deserves him. Indeed, victims of domestic violence, you should be constantly fretting over whether you are worthy of your abuser’s hatelove.
Ana doesn’t want to have this big relationship feels chat in the garage before work, so she leaves. At her desk, she finds a note directing her to Elizabeth’s office. I don’t remember meeting this person, but I’m assuming she was Jack’s boss.
Lor: We were specifically told last chapter that Elizabeth didn’t want to hire Ana due to her lack of experience and expertise. Now, let’s sit back and watch:
Sweeney: Elizabeth has bummer news: Jack’s gone. Ana keeps her, “Welp, this is awkward!” to herself, in a rare display of decent judgment. Then, as predicted, Elizabeth tells Ana that she wants her to take over Jack’s job until they find a replacement, because this company is as big of a sham as this plot.
Ana points out that she’s only been there “for a week or so,” but Elizabeth says she has no concerns, because the boss’s boss’s boss is fucking Ana, which makes her totes qualified! Kidding. She tells Ana that the other commissioning editors have seen Ana’s totes awesome work from that one chapter where she did some work and that they all know she has “a shrewd mind.” I jump to the LOL end of the line. It’s hilarious when other people talk about Ana’s imaginary good qualities.
Also, it’s implied that Jack raped or attempted to rape Elizabeth because she looks “haunted” as she whispers to Ana that she’s glad Jack is gone. This isn’t the first time it’s implied that this guy has been sexually assaulting err’body. It’s only when the girlfriend of the boss’s boss’s boss is targeted that he gets the boot. That’s not so much rage or LOL, but general sadness because I’m kind of thinking, “Yep. That part sounds legit.”
Lor: Not legit is that Christian Grey runs him out of the office and no one thought to contact any sort of proper authority to report him and stop this from happening to other women. Because Christian Grey doesn’t care about proper authorities. He only cares THAT SOMEONE TOUCHED ANA ZOMG. I don’t think he even properly understands what almost happened to Ana, just that SOMEONE NOT NAMED CHRISTIAN TOUCHED HER.
Sweeney: YUP. His lack of proper comprehension is evident in his heavy-duty victim blaming.
Back at her desk, Ana immediately has to call Grey, because he really just keeps her on the payroll to talk to him all day anyway. Grey, however, swears he had nothing to do with this. I want to call bullshit, but I forgot that we’re supposed to believe that everyone everywhere thinks that Ana is the greatest thing ever. These two have so few interactions with other people and genuinely suck, so it’s really easy to forget that. I always get confused by these moments.
Grey gets all growly over the fact that Ana doesn’t trust him when he swears he did not interfere, because, you know, she has no past precedent on which to doubt him like literally every other time she asked him not to interfere. He also yells at her some more about using her Blackberry when she spends all day emailing him.
E. L. James skips over Ana supposedly actually working because (1) she knows we don’t care -and- (2) we all know Ana doesn’t really work anyway. This is a good time for me to put Lor’s face in this post, right?
Lor: Hi, my face! Also, when I go to California in April, hopefully Sweeney and I will find some vlogging time and then we will have new face gifs to offer. Because face gifs are really what are important.
Sweeney: Priorities.
Ana has to be at some super important meeting that she has had zero time to actually prepare for because she hasn’t even worked there long enough to know that it’s a thing that she would have to prepare her boss for. Also, her boss wouldn’t even have been there that day so this is all just contrivance like everything else. Question: if it’s all contrivance, IS ANY OF IT CONTRIVANCE?
As she gets ready to breeze into her VIP meeting, she remembers that she was supposed to have lunch with Mia. Thanks to the contrivance loop, Ethan shows up just then! She decides to solve her problem by making them go to lunch with each other, even though they’ve never met. Um. Wut?
It’s all good, though, because they are both totally into each other immediately and they fall in the sort of insta-love that these books are so fond of.
Confession: She describes Mia’s arrival and I am annoyed that this fanfiction made Alice “curvaceous and tall.” YOU COULDN’T EVEN DO FANFICTION RIGHT. Sorry, I’ll go sit in the Shame Corner. It’s on the opposite end of the same wall as the Asshole Corner.
Lor: BEST EVER. I’M CRYING TEARS OF HAPPINESS IN THE CORNER OF ENDLESS TEARS.
Sweeney: I’ll bring you A Big Ass Goblet of Win from the liquor cabinet.
After she’s sent them off so that she doesn’t have to deal with Christian-Grey-less human interaction, she goes back to her desk to find flowers from the aforementioned psychopath, congratulating her on her she-did-it-all-by-herself promotion.
Lor: Just so we’re clear, Ana went from being a glorified secretary to an editor in one week at a publishing house. AND SO, no matter how many “you did it all by yourself” flowers Ana gets from Grey, that is suspiciously something that could only happen to someone fucking the boss.
Sweney: YUP. Grey had to tell somebody else to fire Jack, and that somebody obviously knows that the incompetent secretary is fucking the boss. That somebody also knows that this company is a joke.
Time for more emails, because several whole paragraphs have now passed without Grey/Ana interaction.
Boring emails are boring. She “flushes” and “Oh my”s because he suggests that they go on a picnic? I do not understand. I forgot to add an “IDK” zone to my continuum.
Since the flowers, brief email, and office gossip about where-oh-where her flowers could have come from are the only portions of her work day that dealt with Grey, we cut to her packing up. No mention of her attending her boss meeting. Not that we give any shits about Ana’s career (or Ana’s anything) at this point, but it says a lot about how little E. L. James could be bothered to develop actual characters that on the day Ana gets a promotion we literally do not see her do any work whatsoever. Being told to attend a meeting is the only thing we see of what should be a significant event in her life. However, because Ana’s existence is defined only by Christian Grey, receiving an undeserved promotion doesn’t even warrant details.
She’s totes excited to meet her boyfriend’s shrink and also about said boyfriend’s upcoming birthday. She ducks into a store that sells touristy crap to buy him a present that she wants him to have before they have their Please, Sir, Tell Me More About How I’m Going To Get Murdered session.
When she meets Grey at his apartment, she has to tell him about inadvertently setting Mia up with Ethan, which causes Grey to go all storm-cloud eyes, because he doesn’t want his baby sister dating, I gather.
They drive over to the shrink’s office, which is super close. I approve of murderapists living so close to their therapists, even if their therapist is as useless as Grey’s must be. Ana gives him her birthday present, but makes him promise not to open it until Saturday. Why the hell did he have to have it now, then? Whatever.
Lor: Ana describes Dr. Flynn’s office and it is the best description ever:
The room is understated: pale green with two dark green couches facing two leather winged chairs, and it has the atmosphere of a gentlemen’s club.
What does “gentlemen’s club” mean across the pond because here in the US, where these characters are supposedly from, we use that phrase pretty strictly for strip clubs. Dr. Flynn’s office is a green strip club! There is a poetic quality about Grey receiving therapy sessions in close proximity to a stripper pole.
Sweeney: Poetry, indeed.
Inside Flynn’s office, he starts out by giving Ana a speech about how important privacy is for their sessions and she’s all, “Psh, don’t worry! I signed that NDA.” And Flynn’s all, “Wait, Christian, you start your relationships with an NDA?” HOW DID HE NOT KNOW THIS ALREADY? Grey has been going to this guy for two years and this is news to him?
Anyway, Flynn tells Ana that he knows all about her already because of how “forthcoming” Grey has been, which makes negative sense to me, given the fact that he didn’t know something as hugely significant as the fact that he was making women sign fake contracts before beating them senseless.
Grey tells Flynn that Ana’s the one who wanted to be there that day, to ask him questions. Ana gets real awkward, so Flynn suggests that Grey leave. He’s annoyed, but he goes. Flynn notices Ana relax once he’s gone and asks Ana if Grey scares her. “‘Yes. But not as much as he used to.’ I feel disloyal, but it’s the truth.” And then the therapist is basically all, “K. Anyway, ask me questions!”
WHAT? I hadn’t given much thought to how useless Christian Grey’s therapist must be until now, but just as Ana’s experience with the gynecologist was a lesson in Things That Are Not OK: Gynecology Edition, this is TTANOK: Domestic Violence Victim + Mental Health Professional Edition. Meeting additional characters who are oblivious to the red flags, especially characters who should be most alert to this shit, moves me to the Rage Sobbing zone.
They have a whole stupid conversation in which we reiterate all the shit we already know about Christian Grey, only now it’s being said by a therapist, so E. L. James had to Google some psychological terms. Annoyingly and predictably, Flynn explains all of Grey’s many murderapist tendencies in a totally flippant this-is-all-totes-NBD fashion. End game: yeah, he was way fucked up, but then he met you and now that we talk about how he wants to marry you, he’s totally fine, reiterating the you-can-fuck-change-your-abusive-boyfriend theme of these books.
AND THEN. E. L. James has our therapist explicitly state that BDSM is really just a lifestyle choice, and that Ana’s fixation on sadism as a psychological condition is a false concern. I’m with dear Dr. Flynn on that as a concept. It’s just downright laughable given that E. L. James has been murking the waters between BDSM and actual abuse from the very beginning. I’m not sure how many more times I can rant about this, but this feels like a bit of a too-little-too-late apology of sorts. I wonder if someone called her on this as she was posting her fan fiction, and that prompted this stupid little speech? Don’t know, don’t care. Point is that this is all bullshit and irrelevant. The fact that sane people can have kinks is irrelevant because this is a story about an insanely controlling guy who frequently introduces non-consensual acts of violence to the relationship. Completely different.
Of course, Flynn is insisting that it’s not at all different because Grey is totally over BDSM now that he’s with a girl who won’t consent. Did you hear my sigh-groan across the internet? Or did you miss it because you were doing it too?
Lor: Our sigh-groans synced up and created a wave of OMGWHUTWHYYSIIIIGH. That wasn’t a slight earthquake, you guys. It was Traumateers sigh-groaning in unison.
Sweeney: Now that I’ve stopped trying to treat this as a rational conversation, I get to laugh and laugh and laugh when Flynn says that Grey is not insane. Then he’s all, “Grey’s trying to not be a murderapist any more, so we have to respect his trying.” And Ana’s all, “That’s all you’ve got?” And Flynn’s response is, “There are no guarantees in life.” LOL. No guarantees that your insane boyfriend has given up on wanting to beat the shit out of you. Just cross your fingers and hope for the best!
Perhaps the only true thing that Flynn says in this conversation is, “Emotionally, Christian is an adolescent.” That’s pretty low-ranking on the list of Christian Grey problems. Plus, so is she. But fine, point that actual problem out. Point that out and then carry on as if that’s not cause for concern. Carry on with your failure to do your job, because E. L. James, the incompetent writer, creates incompetent professionals across all fields.
Then the conversation turns to Ana and her OMG WHY AM I NOT PRETTIEEERRR issues and I have never been so happy for Christian Grey to contrivance-enter a room. It’s time to go, says Grey. On their way out the door, they have a whispered chat about the GSP’s recovery progress. There is no actual news, it’s just there as a flimsy excuse for Ana to continue obsessing over her insecurities.
As they head to her car to go celebrate her undeserved promotion, Josecob calls. Ana forgot about him too, because she forgets about everyone who isn’t Grey. He’s clearly bummed to learn that Ana’s living with Grey and that their hot-minute-old relationship is all srsbsns, but he still wants to meet her for drinks.
Grey is totes annoyed, but he doesn’t forbid it, and we get more uncomfortable daddy/daughter this-is-not-a-relationship-of-equals in which she’s crossing her fingers that she’ll be allowed to go and is surprised when she is.
Lor:
I hope my abusive daddy-boyfriend lets me out of the house!
Sweeney: It continues with their argument over whether she gets to drive. Again, due to Grey’s miracle ~changes~ she gets her way. Sorry if I was supposed to be impressed by her getting her way for the most absurdly reasonable requests that shouldn’t have even been issues of any kind.
Lor: Especially since Grey’s deal is that he doesn’t like to be driven around. EXCEPT WHEN HIS CHAUFFEUR DOES IT. My new theory is that Grey purposefully tells Ana she can’t do ridiculous things, so then when he changes his mind and “lets her” she’s super impressed and forget the fact that she’s in the world’s stupidest relationship.
Sweeney: Oh, also, JK. He’s barking orders at her about their driving, so finally she’s all, “Fuck this,” and pulls over. They fight for .2 seconds, and then they kiss and it’s all better because Grey’s going to drive now.
Lor: Nevermind.
Sweeney: They talk more about what Flynn said, and Grey mentions how he’s been through every kind of therapy ever and it’s a really silly list of “therapies.” I’m pretty sure she just Googled “words that end in ism.”
Ana repeats the conversation she had with Flynn, but now it’s littered with all the usual I’m-not-good-enough-for-you bullshit that accompanies most Ana/Grey conversations. Fortunately, they are almost to their destination and it’s a SURPRISE that Lor gets to deal with next week.
Whisper Count – 10
Murmur Count – 14
Favorite comment last post: The inner goddess returns! And pole vaulting from a bunker, no less. As ridiculous as she is, I have to admit that I missed that bitch. Also, it seems like EL James is just pulling random verbs out of a hat for all the inner goddess antics. It’s like Mad Libs. “My inner goddess ___(verb)__s out of a ___(noun)___ with a __(ballet move)___ into a __(noun)___.” – antiscian
Next time of Fifty Shades Darker: What’s the next step after proposing to your girlfriend of five weeks and/or the next logical step after a tandem-psychiatrist visit? House buying, of course! Stay tuned for chapter 18.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
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