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Seven-Spotted Ladybug
- Shortly after Darren informs his daughters about his impending death, the scene cuts to him lying in bed with Genevieve and Matilda curled up on either side of him. And this is the last we see of him.
Giant Asian Mantises
- Matilda's grand experiment in getting "white-girl wasted" ends with her drunkenly crying and admitting that she's not really as happy or on top of things as she makes herself out to be, but she's afraid that if she doesn't go on to college, Nicholas and Genevieve will resent her. She also really misses her dad and is having trouble adjusting to life without him.
Silkmoths
- Unable to stand up to Genevieve and defend Alex, Nicholas dumps Alex, who is naturally very upset. He then quickly falls into a depression.
- Beneath Matilda's Insane Troll Logic about how she and Genevieve must get Nicholas and Alex back together or end up in foster care is a very deep fear - that Nicholas might decide that he doesn't want to continue taking care of them.
West African Giant Black Millipedes
- Matilda confesses to Luke about her feelings for him... and he gently rejects her. Already in a bad way from having a little too much to drink, and convinced that Luke had been leading her on out of pity, she spirals into a really bad meltdown, screaming and thrashing herself against a trailer.
Harvester Ants
- Throughout the first half of the episode, Matilda's belligerent attitude is either frustration at how her siblings still treat her like a child because of her autism, or shame that she lost her virginity under less-than-ideal circumstances, or possibly some combination of both.
- Nicholas manages to so thoroughly ruin his romantic weekend with Alex that Alex flat-out dumps him, only for Alex to take him back after Nicholas breaks down crying. It's not one of the better moments in their relationship.
Blue Death-Feigning Beetles
- Penny confesses to Tellulah that she wishes she'd had more kids, and now, because of the hysterectomy, she won't. Even Tellulah can't bring herself to say something mean about this.
- Worried about Matilda's ability to survive in New York, Genevieve suggests to Nicholas that they lie and tell Matilda that she was rejected by Juilliard.
Maggots
- Alex tries repeatedly to talk about his relationship with Nicholas, but Nicholas not only ignores him, but also declares that he doesn't always love him, saying that he doesn't really believe that it's possible to love anyone all the time. Alex spends most of the episode stewing over this.
- Poor Jeremy just wanted a chance at a relationship with Matilda and/or Drea, but instead ends up humiliated when he can't even bring himself to even touch either girl. And then, when he tries to flee into the hall to de-stress, he stumbles across Nicholas and Alex fooling around in the kitchen. Granted, he knew in advance that there might be sex and he accepted the invitation anyway, but it's still not hard to feel sorry for him.
Monarch Butterflies
- In their first attempt at a relationship, Matilda repeatedly hurts Drea's feelings through her own insensitivity, culminating in her accidentally humiliating Drea by bluntly rejecting her "promposal" because she was hoping to get a "cooler" date. Happily, she soon realizes that she's being an ass and manages to patch things up with Drea in time for the prom.
- Drea is not entirely blameless in their breakup. During their initial relationship, she repeatedly violates Matilda's personal space by hugging her (with Matilda looking uncomfortable when Drea squeezes her too closely), and her "promposal" effectively forced Matilda to make a very public decision in front of the class, which might have easily sent her into a meltdown.
- During the parent-teacher conferences, Sam bluntly informs Nicholas that in her professional opinion, Matilda is not ready for college, let alone a college on the other side of the country, away from any support system that she has.
- After Nicholas confronts Genevieve about her grades, Genevieve gets angry and claims that she never wanted him to adopt her and Matilda, but that they were stuck with him because their dad didn't give them enough time to really consider their options. Nicholas gets so angry with her that he tells both her and Matilda to get out of the car.
- It's a little thing, but when Nicholas tells Genevieve and Matilda to get out of the car, Genevieve argues, but Matilda just meekly gets ready to get out. She really is afraid that Nicholas could stop loving her.
Discoid Cockroaches
- During Genevieve's open-mike performance, she unwittingly exposes the source of all of her complicated feelings towards Matilda - she still vividly remembers Matilda suffering a very bad meltdown the last time Genevieve refused to play along with her, which culminated in Matilda vomiting on her. The memory has made her both terrified of upsetting Matilda and resentful about how much control this has given Matilda over her... which in turn makes her feel guilty that she resents Matilda over something that Matilda doesn't even know she's doing."For her, there isn't her way and my way. There is just the way."
- After a mostly-upbeat trip to New York City, Matilda tries to take the subway by herself, and it does not end well for her. The worst part is, it's not that anything especially traumatic happens to her, it's just that it's too loud, and too chaotic, and there are just too many things that don't make sense to her. She manages to find her way back to Nicholas and Genevieve, and then just bursts into tears.
Gray Bird Grasshopper
- During her descent into depression after the trip to New York, Matilda completely cut off all communication with Drea. This went on for four weeks. When Matilda finally calls, the phone is answered by Suze, Drea's mother, who is pissed; having no idea why Matilda stopped calling or texting (and not having a particularly high opinion of Matilda in the first place), she had assumed that Matilda had dumped Drea and had been forced to explain that to Drea, and is thus understandably unhappy about having to turn around and admit that she was wrong.
- When Matilda and Drea finally talk, Drea is still visibly upset. She tells Matilda that she can never shut her out like that again.
- While talking with Suze on the phone, Nicholas discovers that Matilda was so despondent that she cut all the wires in her piano. Even after Nicholas has the piano repaired, we don't see her actually play again until several episodes later.
Jungle Centipede
- Alex learns that his parents are divorcing. While he initially makes jokes about it with Nicholas and Genevieve, when we actually see him signing with his deaf father, his dad is inconsolable.
- Matilda realizes that while she does care about Drea, she is not sexually attracted to her, and her guilt at leading Drea on has made her anxious about touching or kissing her, and thus she decides that the only ethical course of action is to break up with Drea. This goes exactly as badly as you'd expect.
Emperor Scorpion
- During the memorial ceremony, Genevieve laments that with her father gone, she has no one left to tell her stories about her mother, who died when she was too young to remember.
- Matilda confesses to Genevieve that she deeply regrets breaking up with Drea, as Drea was the first person she met who didn't try to "fix" her.
- After much badgering by Alex, Nicholas finally opens up about his complicated feelings for his father - when Darren left, his mother fell into a depression, and the only thing that seemed to make her feel better was venting to Nicholas about how much she resented Darren, and the only time Nicholas was able to escape that constant negativity was when he visited Darren and the girls, but then the visits always ended and he'd have to go back and pretend to Penny that he'd hated being in California, because he feared that any intimation that he still loved his father would be seen as a betrayal of his mother, and that she wouldn't love him anymore.
Cave Cockroaches
- Genevieve created a video about Joan of Arc's mother and put a lot of effort into it, only to delete it, despite everyone liking it, because she was convinced that they were all lying to her.
- Nicholas and Alex get into a big fight, because Nicholas waited two weeks to ask Alex how he was feeling about his parents' divorce, and was only asking now because he was bored and nobody else was talking to him.
California Banana Slugs
- Alex visits his newly-divorced father, hoping that maybe his dad will give him some words of wisdom to help him with his relationship problems with Nicholas. Instead, his dad advises him to simply dump Nicholas, reasoning that people don't really change, they just compromise themselves in order to avoid being alone, and eventually, the ever-growing list of compromises makes people bitter.
- Left alone with Nicholas while Matilda has sex with Ian, Drea confides that she finds this new arrangement uncomfortable, but desperately wants to keep Matilda happy so that they won't break up again. The stakes are especially high for her when you remember that the last time she and Matilda fell out of contact, her mother took away her phone.
- Asked about why he became an entomologist, Nicholas talks about how back in Australia, he'd been fascinated with Christmas beetles, but had noticed that as he got older, they appeared less and less, and thus become an entomologist to find out why. He then mentions that he'd been in the middle of a project to study them, but then he got that fateful call summoning him to California...Drea: That's quite sad.
Regal Jumping Spider
- Matilda and Drea's trip exposes how much their relationships with their respective homes and families differ. For Drea, her parents and home are stifling, and she views the cabin trip as a chance to prove that she and Matilda can function on their own. But for Matilda, it's the opposite - her home is comfortable and she can't imagine being without her siblings around, and thus being alone in the woods just causes her anxiety.
Woolly Bear Caterpillar
- Nicholas is rapidly reaching breaking points in both his romantic relationship with Alex and his familial relationship with Matilda. With Alex, his refusal to listen or consider Alex's opinions is getting on Alex's nerves, and while he is aware of the problem, he does not comprehend how bad it's getting, which only infuriates Alex more. With Matilda, his hesitance to lay down basic boundaries on her behavior has resulted in a situation where he has to come down increasingly hard on her, because her wild impulses are now affecting people beyond just herself and her family, but that cracking down means that he's going to have to get used to her resenting him.
- On the other end of things, while Matilda's plan to marry Drea is badly misguided, she's not wrong when she points out how incredibly rare it is for autistic people to find someone to marry.
Banded Argiope Spider
- After having to chauffeur a half-drunk Genevieve and Barb to the Stevens cabin and dreading the awkwardness of being dragged into a Moss-Stevens family wedding, Alex finally hits his breaking point and dumps Nicholas, who had no idea things had gotten that bad between them.
Carolina Sphinx Moth
- Suze relates how she discovered that Drea was autistic - when Drea was little, Suze's mother died and Drea, realizing something was wrong but not understanding what it was, kept asking Suze how she could help until Suze accidentally lost her temper and snapped at Drea that she wished that there was someone else who would feel as sad as her... to which Drea responded that she was aware that her mother was sad, but didn't think it was right that Suze had to be sadder than her, and was thus trying to help.
- In the middle of the last argument between Alex and Nicholas, Matilda walks in and asks if they've made up yet, and Alex and Nicholas both insist that they're not fighting anymore, at which point Matilda cheerfully hands Alex his wedding invitation, because she considers him one of her best friends. You can practically feel the knife in Alex's chest as it suddenly occurs to him that, contrary to what he believes, Matilda doesn't just see him as the guy who dated her brother.
- With Alex gone, Nicholas falls into a bad depression, made worse because he and Genevieve feel they have to hide it from Matilda.
Gulf Fritillary Butterfly
- Nicholas and Alex try to clear the air between them so that things won't be awkward at Matilda's wedding, but can't, because Nicholas is bitter about being dumped, and Alex unintentionally makes things worse by trying to leave things open in case Nicholas wants to reconcile, which just makes Nicholas more bitter. By the end of the episode, an exasperated Nicholas tells Alex that whatever he hopes Nicholas will become, he won't, and he should just move on.
- Pissed off that Matilda is making her read a prepared speech that she assumes will be an endorsement of Matilda and Drea's marriage, Genevieve finally puts her foot down and refuses to go along with it, admitting that the whole time, she's been hoping that someone else would stop the wedding, and now feels that it falls to her to stop it. She anticipates a major fight with Matilda, but instead Matilda just starts shutting down, afraid to go through with the wedding if Genevieve's not on board.
- Meanwhile, Drea spends most of the episode on the verge of a meltdown, thinking that the delays in Matilda showing up are because she's gotten cold feet, while her mother is on the verge of going ballistic.
