‘A Million Little Things’ Delivers Most Heartbreaking Episode Yet (RECAP)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for A Million Little Things Season 5 Episode 12 “Tough Stuff.”]

If you didn’t sob through the penultimate episode of A Million Little Things, including while Gary (James Roday Rodriguez) was making jokes throughout, you’re made of tougher stuff than we are.

As feared, after coughing up blood during Katherine (Grace Park) and Greta’s (Cameron Esposito) wedding, Gary is dying. His cancer has spread to his other lung, and it’s no longer responding to treatment. “This will be a fight,” his doctor warns. And fight Gary tries. He gets chemo. He shaves his head. He gets worse and worse, and soon, it’s Javi’s first birthday. Javi gets his dad a T-shirt reading “The Original” to go with his “The Remix.” Gary cracks a joke about being down to a medium and soon needing to raid Theo’s closet. No one laughs. “You gotta at least let me have my cancer jokes,” Gary tells them. “I’m here all week. We hope.”

His next appointment with the oncologist doesn’t leave them with much hope, but Maggie (Allison Miller) focuses on continuing to fight, refusing to just accept they’re at the point where they can only make Gary comfortable. “We’re at the point now where any treatment we try may affect his quality of life,” the doctor says. But Maggie read about a study using insulin therapy — very experimental, the doctor stresses — and decides that’s their next step. “Thanks for getting me this far, doc,” Gary says on his way out. “It means the world.”

In therapy with Jessica (Bresha Webb), Gary admits that while Maggie’s scared, he’s not. “I’m just really tired,” he shares. “Having Dr. Stein tell me I did everything I could was a huge relief.” Someone once told Jessica that every life has a length and a width, and it’s important not to sacrifice the latter for the former. Cue Gary’s “so you’re saying on top of everything else I’m dealing with now size matters?”

It’s after Gary has sat down with Katherine to go over his will (something he wants to keep between them for now) that Maggie comes home with the good news: He got into the study in Mexico. He tries to protest, but “the only reason that I am still here is you never let me give up,” she tells him, and to her, it’s not different. “You made me fight, which is what you’re going to do.” She even dares him to go, essentially taking the decision out of his hands.

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But Gary knows this is likely not going to go his way. Yes, there’s a success story on the website, he tells Eddie (David Giuntoli) and Rome (Romany Malco), but his situation is completely different. But “end of the day, [Maggie] needs to believe that she did everything she could, so I’m going to give whatever life I have left to making sure she doesn’t spend the rest of hers regretting anything.”

That means the others have to be prepared to say “goodbye goodbye” at the airport. Danny (Chance Hurstfield) lies and says his interview for Harvard got pushed back; he’s really at home. (“Everyone has to deal with this in their own way. He knows I love him. I know he loves me. Danny and I are good,” Gary assures his sister.) Sophie (Lizzy Greene) decides to go to Mexico, ostensibly to help, but, as she later admits, to put off saying goodbye. Rome and Regina (Christina Moses) miss an event for her campaign. “We’re saying goodbye to our friend. Nothing else matters,” she says. “I needed a win,” he confesses, emotional.

And the group just happens to end up where Gary told Maggie to go to England. “Sometimes I wish I could get that time back,” Gary says now. To start off the farewells, Gary again jokes: “Look, I know this Mexico trip seems like a complicated way to get fluent in Spanish, but I’m also going to get a legit farmer’s tan, OK? This is a win-win, for everybody.” And then one by one, they hug him, trying to pretend they know they’ll see him again while Gary says, to each:

“I’m proud of you, OK? And not just because you’re aging so gracefully, although that’s most of it.” (Eddie)

“Hey, do me a favor: Take care of my best friend Rome while I’m gone, OK?” (Rome, who repeats that back to him)

“I think I’ll miss you most of all, Scarecrow.” (Katherine)

“It feels like a bit of an overstep for my future city councilwoman, don’t you think? Don’t worry. I mailed in my ballot.” (Regina, after she says she loves him)

“Love you, too.” (Delilah)

Then after an “I love you” to everyone, a wheelchair is brought out to Gary. “Oh, Ed, I get it, I get it,” he quips. It’s once Maggie wheels him inside that she has her realization and brings him back to the others. “Hey, bad news, Ed. You’re no longer the most handsome one of us in a wheelchair,” Gary calls out. “Good news, Rome. You are no longer the only one battling male-pattern baldness.” Maggie explains, “I realized that he needs to be here for whatever time he — he just needs to be here, with all of us.” So what now? “We go home and you help me unpack and we all get in one bed together,” Gary says.

But their home situation is what leads to Maggie breaking down, to Delilah (Stephanie Szostak). With talk of bringing in a hospital bed to make him more comfortable, they won’t even be sleeping in the same bed anymore, Maggie cries. “How am I supposed to do this? How did you do it?” Delilah tells her she’ll lean on them and get through it, like she did. “I’m going through the motions, and I know I don’t have much time with him. And I feel like I’m already grieving,” Maggie says. “I want to be laughing at his inappropriate jokes and I want my heart to not shatter every time Javi smiles at him, and I want to be able to enjoy the life we have left.” Maybe she can do both and celebrate their beautiful family, Delilah suggests, and with that, Maggie knows what she needs to do.

It’s just after Eddie has revealed that he and Delilah are moving in down the hall that Danny (who explains to Sophie that he didn’t go to the airport because he didn’t know how to say goodbye) stops by to see Gary. He knows what it’s like not having your dad around, Danny agrees with Gary, but “thanks to you, it was a lot less lonely.” And for Gary, “nothing would make me happier than if he turned out to be just like you.”

ABC/Darko Sikman

Then comes time to find out what Maggie figured out: She tracked down the ring that Gary had gotten her, then pawned to pay for Eddie’s rehab. The wild goose chase was worth every second, she tells Gary, “kinda like you and me. You said at the airport you wish you could have all that time back, and I can’t help but wonder how life would look different if I had just said yes the first time. But one thing I absolutely do know is I want to celebrate every second we have left together and I want to do that as your wife. So, Gary Mendez, will you marry me?” He says yes, they kiss, and then in true Gary fashion, “Does this mean we can finally have sexual intercourse? The kind we learned about in school?”

And with that, the episode ends with the two getting married in their apartment (and Rome officiating) and a taste of joy amidst the tragedy and funeral to come. In other words, exactly what we’ve come to expect from this show. Now, all that’s left is to say goodbye.

A Million Little Things, Series Finale, Wednesday, May 3, 10/9c, ABC