The sad thing is, I really liked the Wedding Arc back in the day. I thought there was great chemistry with the warts of both characters up front and on display.
Yeah. And Claire would sometimes be flustered and nervous but would also snark at Marten and give him a bit of shit now and then in a hilarious way, and we haven't seen any of that since the romance officially started.
Marten's taking such a paternal role on this date. I get that Claire is nervous about her first date and that Marten as the more experienced one wants to help her through her nervousness, but do those things override
everything else we've known about the characters and their relationship? And if Marten is so into Claire, shouldn't he seem a little more excited about this? A little giddy, nervous, lustful, all those normal things a boy feels when he's first falling for a girl? Isn't staying totally chill even when Claire was clearly overcome with sexy thoughts about him a bit strange?
I think it's cool to have Marten grow as a character, and staying with a running gag of "Marten is a passive dork who doesn't know what to say to ladies" would get boring, but he could become a more comfortable and confident guy without magically turning into The Perfect Date Who Always Does Everything Exactly Right.
Please indulge the curiosity of a 58-year-old, and tell me how far the term "makeouts" goes in today's audience. Marten's "makeouts" with Delilah, for example, seemed to have included sex. By that definition, Marten and Claire have had no makeouts yet. In the bygone past, "making out" covered the innocent smooching as well as the bigger and better things. How does it stand in today's lexicon, please?
As a current College student I feel as if I have some level of ability to answer this. Anything from a decent amount of kisses in a given time space (usually if your lips only leave for a few seconds to a minute) to actually having sex.
I'm 35, and in the usage I'm accustomed to, "making out" definitely does not include sex. Typical usage might include:
Person A: So, did you guys
do it?Person B: No, we just made out.
The spectrum of activities that count as "makeouts" generally range from prolonged kissing (more than just "a kiss") up to anything that can be done while both partners have their underpants on.
Based on that usage, I'd been assuming that Marten and Delilah didn't have sex, that they probably got as far as what older folks would call "heavy petting" and then fell asleep together. Marten clearly had his boxers on when he woke up next to Delilah, but I suppose it's possible that they had sex and then he put them back on before going to sleep.