Ah, beef stew. It pretty much guarantees the ultimate feel-good family dinner, doesn't it? Not the stuff in the can (although I’m not at all against Mr. Dinty Moore), but the home-cooked love-fest of beef, carrots, potatoes, and thick gravy…
Well, if you’re Davey Yaffe and you’ve just been sent to live with your mother’s estranged family in another state after your lawyer-father got you acquitted of your girlfriend’s murder and everyone agrees you need a fresh start in a new place, it doesn’t mean much.
It takes Aunt Julia two full days before she’ll even be in the same room with Davey, and when they finally all sit down for dinner, Davey is as hungry for human interaction as he is for the savory stew. And he gets little of either.
This meal is the perfect look into the family dynamic; when Davey thinks, I wanted more, but [it] was out of reach and somehow I was reluctant to ask, he means not only the beef stew, but affection, acceptance. He’s not only tortured by the fact that the comfort food is just out of reach, but that the comfort itself is as well.
After that opening, you have to hope that the meals and the relationships will get better for Davey, but then there’s the ghost upstairs and she’s hungry, too…
Beef stew is such a homey, comfort-food type of meal. When my parents make it, it's like love in a pot. But in the context of this scene, the emotional sadness is driven home because its a family scene around a classic dish... But poor Davey.
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