Warning: This article contains spoilers fromAbbott Elementaryseason 5, episode 19, "Trip."
Quinta Brunsonknows thatAbbott Elementaryfans will be upset after Wednesday's episode, but she's not making any apologies.
"I don't even want to say I'm sorry," the show's creator and star tellsEntertainment Weekly. "We're all going to go on a nice sun ride with each other [after this], right?"
That remains in question after fans watched Janine (played by Brunson) and Gregory (Tyler James Williams) teeter on the brink of ending their relationship afterseasons of waiting for them to finally get together.
In the episode aptly titled "Trip," the newly cohabitating couple find themselves unexpectedly at odds while planning a couple's trip. Just when they've finally landed on the Outer Banks as their destination, the itinerary proves to be a continuing source of obstacles between them. First, it's the question of whether to stay at a hotel or an Airbnb — which ends with a compromise of sourcing a B'n'B — only for the mode of transportation to prove truly insurmountable.
Although Gregory's inflexibility when it comes to choosing between taking a flight to the Outer Banks versus driving there is expected of the first-grade teacher, it's Janine's refusal to stand down that might be surprising for some fans. But maybe it shouldn't, Brunson reasons.
"This is a girl who has, over the years, learned to stand up for what she wants and to not compromise as much," the Emmy winner points out. "We talked about that a lot in the [writers'] room. Her learning, especially with a trip — there was a trip she wanted to take a few seasons ago and she was going to compromise for the sake of her mother and she learned not to do that. So she's trying to exercise that. She's trying to exercise her wants and getting what she needs."
And who couldn't respect the way Janine confronted Gregory about his less-than-compromising compromise of deciding they should go to Atlantic City instead of the Outer Banks?!
But between Janine's hard-won backbone and Gregory's doggedness, the episode-long back and forth ends with the unthinkable; the argument about their contrasting ideas for vacation ends with Janine suggesting that maybe, in light of their difficultly, they should break up.
This is why they say you should take a vacation before you move in together!
Despite the surety that fans would be sent into a tizzy over that emotional cliffhanger, Brunson shared that the fight was something she and the sitcom writers were excited about seeing played out.
"I think [we were excited] because Jeanine and Gregory are two characters we know very well, and more than anything, two characters wethinkwe know very well. So we think we know their relationship. We feel settled with it," she says. "But I think as with any relationship, the inside has its own dynamics. And I thought that they've been in such an easy ride since they got together, it was interesting to all of us to see some different layers there."
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Brunson says she and the writers posed the question of what could be under the surface of Janine and Gregory's relationship to be unearthed, leading to their trials and tribulations on Wednesday.
"Gregory and Janine haven't had this kind of conflict yet," she adds. "So now it's like, what happens when these two developed characters — who have learned a lot of lessons and have done a lot of growing up — come to this kind of point in their relationship?"
But the actress notes that the fight between Janine and Gregory wasn't created simply for the sake of it; it also served as a "moment of growth" for Gregory. "I think that Gregory is a really solutions-based character, and I feel like he's like, 'I provided the solution. That's it.' And that's not always the case when it comes to our interpersonal relationships," she says. "I think that's true for all relationships, romantic, work relationships, and friendships. You really want to try to find something that actually works for both people, and that's just not always easy to do."
It was also a moment of challenge for Brunson and Williams behind the scenes. "We've been doing this for a long time now and you kind of get used to being able to play certain things with your character," Brunson says. "We're used to playing with the kids, we're used to playing nice and fun, and we're used to playing dramatic in other elements, but this was a new challenge for him and I as actors."
"It's kind of fun," the actress adds, laughing. "It's the stuff that makes you feel like you're back in acting class, your character, a new element throne at it, something new to develop. Who is Gregory in this moment? Who is Janine in this moment? And it's fun, honestly, as actors. This last episode and the one where they move in with each other were both episodes where Tyler and I felt a challenge in how we do these things to make sense."
Brunson shares that the challenge went beyond just her and Williams — even the episode's director and supervising director, Razan Ghalayini and Randall Einhorn, respectively, held "a longer tone meeting than usual."
"We really took the time to be like, how is this going to feel? This is a monumental moment for these two characters, as well as our writer of this episode, Ava Coleman," Brunson says. "I felt like we had a two-part tone meeting, which we very rarely do, because this is a big moment. And then on set, same. We took more time to shoot these scenes than we normally would because we really wanted to feel it out in rehearsal and feel it out in the direction."
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She continues, "There were smaller elements like Razan choosing to shoot farther away rather than in closeups in certain scenes. Sometimes it was like, 'Oh, we need to be a bit further away for this because even our camera crew in the show doesn't feel like they should be this close to this discussion. This is between these two characters.' So it was a fun challenge for all of us."
Hopefully the knowledge that the crew behind the cameras were working hard to bring the drama will make any fans feeling personally victimized by the cliffhanger ending of Wednesday's episode feel better!
Abbott Elementaryairs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET onABC.
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