Her mother never would've scheduled an appointment to argue. Jenny didn't argue, she got pissed off and dismissed it until she couldn't any more at which point she ran from whatever it was.

Like her marriage.

But Mallory...that girl's a fighter. You knock her down, she gets right up off the mat and comes up swinging, by God.

Meanwhile, Sam's...he doesn't yell like Leo, but the mentality, the idea of giving up everything to a common political goal, to a reelection, to an office, to a worship-worthy man...that's identical.

And they both have things they don't talk about.

Like ex-spouses.

From what I hear, Lisa was a brilliant and conniving woman, as cut-throat from her Wall Street Office as she was in the way of getting what she wanted from Sam. He was just madly in love with her and naïve enough to never guess she wasn't as in love with him.

Poor Sam never even suspected she would ditch him two months into the marriage so she could get half of everything he owned.

Mallory knew what she was getting into when she married Tom, she figured it was exactly like the relationship she was used to from her father - wait, that sounds wrong. Tom drank as much as her father, let's put it that way. She figured if she could live for 22 years with her father the drunk, it would be no different with her husband the drunk.

As much as I love Mallory, like one of my own girls, I've gotta say that was quite possibly the stupidest move I've ever seen on her part.

At least she wised up before it got too bad. Before we had to go visit her in the morgue instead of just the hospital.

See, the one thing she HADN'T counted on was that, while her father got all mellowed out by his scotch, not everyone has the same reaction to alcohol. Some people get horribly violent and scream at and beat and batter the hell out of whoever's around.

And there are other things they don't talk about.

Fathers who were never around - though one cheated on the mother for the majority of the lifetime and the other never so much as looked at another woman.

Apprehension toward marriage at all, even though only 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce, and since both of them have parents who are recently divorced, and they themselves are divorced, the odds are DAMN good that each of them will not end up divorced, especially not if they're married to each other.

Somehow that makes sense if you do the math.

And she doesn't talk about addiction and press and he doesn't talk about how damn hard he worked to save her father from the press because he thinks it's all in a days work and doesn't deserve special praise. He doesn't mention HIS lapse of judgment that landed him on the front page of many newspapers and in the doghouse with her.

They don't mention that he should have called her, nor do they mention that she could have called him but didn't, as it's the 21^st century and all and it's not always the guy who has to call the girl anymore, even though he feels like he should because he's so full of chivalry, though not sexism. There's a big difference.

Neither one of them mentions Rosslyn because neither one of them likes to think about Josh, best friend and almost-big-brother, almost dying. They don't mention the long hours of the job or the fact that it led to her parents splitting up because deep down they both know it wasn't just the job, only he doesn't know why he knows it and she knows but doesn't want to say it.

It's always easier when one has something to blame.

Maybe they should mention those things. At least to someone - preferably each other. It could help.

Because both of them listen well and would understand.

And it would bring them closer together.

Why aren't they closer together? Well, I'm not sure - that's another thing they won't talk about.