It’s the afterparty and the director tells Olive how well she did, which is fine, and maybe the first time in the book that someone is praising her with a reason to do so. Olive and Oscar talk about their relationship and Olive actually says “Everyone’s rooting for us”, as if the rest of the cast have nothing better to do except sit around and talk about their relationship. Which, as we know from Sammy, Doug, and Howard, they don’t. Olive is stull upset that their relationship is undefined and Oscar doesn’t want to commit, which is fair. Again, it’s a load of talking in circles, page after page of pretty much just dialogue, then they kiss.
But OH MY GOD FINALLY SOMETHING HAPPENS. It’s a horrible something, but a something none the less. So Doug has been crushed by a falling light-or light-rig, it’s not very clear. Anyway, point is, he’s been crushed, and Oscar quickly figures out from his experience that a ghost is to blame. The first time I read this, I thought he was dead, not in the least because Carrie constantly describes the scene as “Doug’s body”, which usually indicates that someone is dead, you know. But he’s still kicking, if grievously injured, and he might lose his arm. It’s absolutely terrible, especially for such a nice character, but sadly we don’t know him any better than knowing that he lives to praise Olive, so sadly there’s not much attachment. Now, there’s the climax for the Sammy story! Doug and Sammy working through the injury together and rebuilding their life and career, overcoming set-backs and coming out stronger. You know, like real people have to. Not the charmed lives of Octopus and Orangutan, neither of whom suffer ANY real setbacks in the book.
Anyway, Tamara jumps ship instantly, but Jane get a little bit of a redemption arc and calls the ambulance. It would have been lovely to see Tamara coming together with Olive to help, even though none of them can do very much-even the two of them sharing a little moment would have been great. I can’t hate Tamara too much for jumping ship-even though it’s not what I or other people would do, no one knows how they’d react in an emergency, even though the book demonises her for it.
However, I do have three big issues with the scene.
- It’s happened so quickly; despite it being the most dramatic thing to happen so far, it’s not given anything like the amount of words that Oscar and Olive’s stupid arguments are given. I’m not sure if Carrie just wanted to play down the gore, which is fine as I imagine most of her readers are young, but honestly it just feels like this potentially-career-ending injury for Doug isn’t anything like as important as these two idiots whining.
- When Fawn warned Oscar that Olive was in danger, she couldn’t have done a real solid and warned him about Doug too? Or was Doug just canon fodder? Chopped liver? Guess so…he’s not special like Olive so he doesn’t get guardian theatre angels. We find out that the ghost who hurt Doug thought he was someone else, which I guess could explain it, but still.
- We never find out whether Doug was okay. This book gets an epilogue and everything (WHICH I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT I’LL SHARE DOWN THE LINE), but not a word about poor Doug. Did he lose his arm? Did he work again? How much money did the production lose in the lawsuit? I guess it was an act of god, I mean ghost, but still. But STILL.