Observations From Mike’s Last Show

Observations from Mike’s last show

His girlfriend and his mom were there. His mom was standing outside the theatre afterwards holding his flowers and it was really sweet.

He wasn’t wearing nail polish, probably because he had to go to the big “happy trails” party afterwards and didn’t want to take the time to take it off. He totally knew people would notice, though, and kept kinda subtly hiding his hands.

When the Murphys’ table came on, there was such loud, long applause. I think it was the first time the applause for that entrance was significantly larger than for when Evan first comes on.

I was a little too far back to see for sure, but I think when the applause wasn’t ending after a few seconds, Mike made like, brief eye contact with Jennifer like ‘please say your line. make it stop.’

He shoved Taylor so hard like I was a little concerned

When he signed the cast, he paused for a really long time beforehand like it was hitting him that this was the last time he was ever going to do it, and especially knowing that it was his idea in the first place, that stung

When he notices that Zoe is mentioned in the note and thinks Evan’s messing with him, he played it differently than I’ve seen him do it before. He didn’t really yell or anything, he just sounded so defeated, but so casual, as if someone has actually done something similar before and he was just disappointed (but not surprised) that it was happening again

You could tell he was just having so much fun during Sincerely, Me. He got really into it.

He gave a thumbs-up and a big, dorky smile on “my sister’s hot.”

He and Taylor literally hugged on “our friendship goes beyond your average kind of bond.”

Oh he also yelled the word “crack” so enthusiastically. 

Disappear sounded fucking amazing like oh my god.

After the reprise of Sincerely Me, his reactions to Evan were fucking priceless. He was like Jared’s silent, dramatic internal monologue.

The fucking “did you fall” scene was so emotional oh my god.

When he walks out onstage during Words Fail, he usually just appears off to the side, looks at Evan for like three seconds and leaves but THIS TIME he almost went all the way center and stared at him for the longest fucking time before leaving with his head bowed and tears in his eyes.

I know there’s a video of the curtain call and everything but everyone was hugging him and Laura went and gave him a huge hug when Taylor came out for his bow (poor guy didn’t get that much applause for a second bc everyone was watching Laura and Mike and then it was like ‘oh shit the lead just walked out we’d better cheer’) and he was in such a rush to get offstage and Phoenix and Asa had to drag him center and you can’t quite tell in the video but he was shaking his head and saying “no, no please, come on…”

But then he took the flowers and hugged JLT so tightly

AND THEN HE STAGEDOORED and he kind of tried to rush through but when Asa and Laura came out and took the selfie and everything, it was smiles and hugs all around.

At first he didn’t want to take the selfie but then Asa said “I won’t post it if you don’t want me to, I promise. I just want to have it.”

Also, some non-Mike related observations

Asa Somers is actually really good. I didn’t think I could ever see anyone but Michael Park as Larry but he pulled it off

Everyone was at the top of their game but Laura and Will were especially giving it their all

I generally prefer Michael Lee Brown’s interpretation of Evan, but the “did you fall” scene, the first half of Words Fail, and the scene right before So Big/So Small were fucking incredible and made you realize exactly why Taylor Trensch got the role

Laura cried so much at curtain call. So much.