Beyond the Routine Mary Lee Tracy the Sequel: Amelia and her Bionic Ankle

In the last episode of Beyond the Routine, we were privy to Lexie's world. We learned about really disgusting injuries involving her toe.

We also learned that she is afraid of doing a Ray on bars because of her toe injury, but she overcame it!  We learned that she's got the hots for a skier dude named Nick who likes to dress like Pete Wentz and wear skinny jeans that would probably fit Lexie.  Mary Lee is basically an embarrassing mom. Lexie also wears Kim Kardashian levels of make-up to the gym, at least for the camera.

This week it's Amelia Hundley's story (aka Lexie's BFF). This episode was far different than Lexie's story. Amelia doesn't have time to make goo goo eyes at ski bums. She's Mary Lee's pet project. Mary Lee is determined to make Amelia into a world class gymnast.
The episode starts off with Amelia and her mom driving her brother, Tucker to school and then dropping Amelia off at the gym. Very no frills, down to business. There is shots of the rain against the window pane of the car. Because apparently, that's deep or something? After an entire weekend of rain, I could care less about the damn rain.

Anyways, Amelia tells us it's where she used to go to school, before she started home schooling. Her mom nods along as she sips her coffee, because, it's early and the symbol for way to frickin' early is coffee. Amelia's mom tells us she's been waiting for her to say she doesn't want to do it anymore since the days when Amelia had to be at the gym at 6 a.m. for TOPS. No such luck, Amelia is dedicated, man.

Amelia says she usually sleeps in the car on the way over, but she's going to need to learn to stay awake because she'll be needing to drive herself to the gym. Amelia and Mom drop off Tucker and then head to the gym. At the gym, we learn that there is a "group message" they get fed every day, sometimes just Lexie, Amelia and Emily, sometimes the whole team. Mary Lee get's it from her Oprah magazine.

The girls are all in a line and Mary Lee is telling them their Oprah saying du jour. She tells them it made her think of Amelia and then the team. So really, it was all directed at Amelia, but Mary Lee doesn't want to look like she's singling Amelia out. Mary Lee starts off her speech by saying something about texting, (because she's totally hip yo), but she wants to focus on "confidence." They've been working on confidence showing on the outside. Tip one for looking confident is to not pull in your lips. Then she makes the girls pull in their lips.

So now she tells them the Oprah wisdom quote. "If you pull in your lips, it says you're holding something back." She uses this to give them a gymnastics analogy and tells them if they're doing that in front of judges, it doesn't send a message of confidence they want to portray. Since it's about Amelia, but not really, she gives the piece of paper to her.

Mary Lee tells us that Amelia is an athlete that has "reached and stretched beyond her god given ability."  This is what Mary Lee says she loves most about her. She explains this up by saying she  of course Amelia is talented, but what she means is talent got her so far, and hard work and grit got her the rest of the way. That and opening herself up to be Mary Lee's pet project.

This means Mary Lee tries to cover up the places where she doesn't think Amelia has a "world class" look. I f-ing hate general categories like that. I am assuming she's talking about skinny balletic lines. We cut to the gym scene and Mary Lee is harping on Amelia about getting moving quicker. I guess she's trying to put some international pressure on Amelia because she's telling her something about getting onto the bar to start warm up in a timely manner. Then she get's up on the bars and does a mini bars set, a couple of toe on pirouettes to a toe on Shaposh. She get's off the bars and Mary Lee tells her she doesn't settle for anything less than that because she knows what Amelia is capable of.

Back to Mary Lee and she says Amelia is special. She says she knows she pushes her, but she tells Amelia she can back off if she wants. Cut to Amelia and she says she's never objected to Mary Lee pushing her. She says she knows she does it because she believes in her. Awww... cue the maudlin music.... I feel a little less sarcasm and snarkiness in my heart. Then we cut to Amelia training leaps on the beam and Mary Lee tells her not to be so heavy and she mentions the sucking the lips again...

Cut back to Mary Lee again, who tells us that sometimes, when the girls are conditioning, Amelia will call to her and ask "Mary Lee! Does this look more world class?" Ahh, craving attention from parental type figures. Just like that, the sarcasm returns. She tells us what a hard worker Amelia is, she'll do "50 more if she needs to." According to Mary Lee, Amelia got a fancy schmancy award (told you the sarcasm was back) in the gym for her character called the "character counsel award." (?)  Mary Lee says she's honest, loyal, with great integrity. Are we talking about my cocker spaniel(that's not an insult by the way, my dog is basically my child)? Is this a job interview? Or is Mary Lee already campaigning for Amelia to be the team captain in Rio ala Aly Raisman, Alicia Sacramone or Amanda Borden (who was also coached by Mary Lee).  Whelp, I guess Amelia will always have a good reference for her resume when she get's old enough.

So then, we go from Mary Lee's Amelia love fest to Amelia with a trainer or a therapist or something, doing something to her ankle. Mary Lee tells us about Amelia having a constant ankle sprain and ankle pain. Amelia tells us that her ankle would be swollen quite a bit. Amelia is one tough kid. She says she would come in the gym and Mary Lee would mention about her ankle being swollen and she'd go about her day. Much like her PIC, Lexie, she doesn't know how she did gymnastics with her ankle like that. This went on until one day, the trainer said she might as well get the ankle checked out. She went to the doctor, the doctor told her they'd do surgery later that week. Next things next, they went into surgery, she had bone chips removed and then they used a tendon from a cadaver to replace a tendon in her ankle. Now, she says everything is "tight" again. A little creepy way to phrase it. But it can't be much worse than Lexie tweeting about Amelia having a dead person's body part in her, tee hee hee. Amelia doesn't seem to mind so much, because now, she's got a six million dollar bionic ankle (hyperbole copyright me). Mary Lee tells us that now that she's healed up from that injury, Amelia is stronger than she was before and she's "bouncier."

Everything is so tight now!

Cut to Amelia training fulls on the beam. 

Now Amelia was dealing with this about the same time Lexie was dealing with her floppy toe issue. Of course, we see that they're mirror images of each other with their ankles taped up.

Twinsies!

Mary Lee talks about Lexie and Amelia again and how they have the same goals. Making a world team and going through 2016. Mary Lee wants her to stay  "tall lean and fit" and improve her flexibility (especially in her shoulders). She says that Amelia is an all around gymnast, while Lexie is more an event specialist. Amelia is someone who can be counted on to fill in on any event.

She talks more about Amelia going above and beyond again and mentions her winning bars at last year's P&G Championships. Mary Lee tells us that is Amelia's weakest event. She's taller, so according to Mary Lee, she's "slower."  Okay, uhh, some of the best bar workers in history are tall, like Svetlana Khokina, who was 5'5", Beth Tweddle, 5'3", and Aliya Mustafina 5'4".  Whatever! '

Both Mary Lee and Amelia tell us that her winning bars gave her more confidence in her abilities.   Cue the inspirational music, cue shots of Lexie and Amelia at the chalk bowl doing a secret handshake.

The End.