Gately's higher power and Bob Death

And the found father, framed in a rearview mirror. Riding home from the Commitment wanting "to both cry and hit somebody," Gately is held by Ferocious Francis's gaze in the mirror — the AA elder with the little oxygen tank taped under his nose, staying "rabidly Active." F.F. is the father Gately never had: the man whose counsel he needs and can't yet take, in front of whom he "can't even look" while confessing his God-doubts, whom he "wouldn't have fucking ever dared tell" his darkest thoughts "man to man." The reach toward this found father is exactly the tentative, terrified thing the never-met Bulat and the note-keeping M.P. between them made almost impossible — a boy raised by absence and methodical cruelty learning, at thirty-odd, to be watched over by an old man in a rearview and not flinch. The substitute-father pole (Schtitt, Lyle, the coaches) shown at its most redemptive and its most fragile.