Best Medicine has never pretended Martin Best is the only interesting person in Port Wenn, but “Take Me Out of the Ballgame” finally proves it.
While Martin is out here accidentally breaking a teenager’s arm and tanking the town’s big playoff hopes, Aunt Sarah quietly steals the episode by picking a fight with a stranger and then making up with a kiss, quite literally.
If you have ever watched a small town lose its mind over sports, the setup feels painfully familiar. The Port Wenn High game is suddenly the only thing anyone can talk about.
(Screenshot/FOX)
Martin, of course, blunders straight into the middle of it, and the town turns on him the second their star player goes down.
But on the sidelines, Best Medicine is doing something sneakier: it is giving Aunt Sarah her own chaos gremlin to bounce off in the form of Eddie, a loudmouthed Bar Harbor fan who rolls in like he is auditioning to be Port Wenn’s new villain.
Aunt Sarah Does Not Need A Man – But She Will Absolutely Fight One
The great thing about Aunt Sarah is that she already feels like the one adult in Port Wenn who has Martin’s number. She knows how he got this way, she knows how not to spook him, and she will still drag him when he deserves it.
Best Medicine Season 1 Episode 3 adds a whole other layer: she is also the kind of woman who will go to war over a baseball game. Eddie shows up from Bar Harbor talking trash, and she just… decides he is her problem now.
Their rivalry escalates fast, and they snipe about whose town does game day better, whose kids are tougher, and whose bar is worth drinking in.
(FOX/Screenshot)
It is petty and specific and exactly the kind of nonsense argument you can only have with someone who gets under your skin in record time.
The episode keeps circling back to them, not because the stakes are big, but because their energy is ridiculous in the most watchable way.
Sarah is not flirting; she is sparring. Eddie, for his part, looks delighted that someone in Ferry Crossing hits back just as hard.
By the time the game is over and the town has decided Martin is Satan with a stethoscope again, Sarah and Eddie have burned through a whole situationship’s worth of banter.
(Francisco Roman/FOX)
So when she kisses him at the end of the episode, it is both “where did that come from?” and “oh, of course she did.”
There is no big speech, no romantic slow‑mo. She just goes for it, like kissing your rival is the most logical endpoint of an afternoon spent yelling across the bleachers.
From Poop To Petty Kisses: Messy Bodies, Messy Choices
If this feels like a wild thing to compare to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, stay with me.
That show’s infamous poop scene has already become its own micro‑controversy, not because fantasy has never done toilet humor before, but because of how literally it chooses to portray Dunk’s terror.
As George R.R. Martin himself has said, he would not have written it that way and did wonder if “we really need this s**t,” but the intent was clear: they wanted his fear to be physical, embarrassing, and impossible to mythologize away.
(Photograph by Steffan Hill/HBO)
Aunt Sarah’s kiss is doing a softer version of the same thing. Up to now, she has mostly existed as Martin’s anchor – the aunt who will make you tea, fix your life, and possibly threaten your enemies.
“Take Me Out of the Ballgame” reminds you she is also a person who can let her worst impulses win. She spends an entire episode escalating a sports feud instead of being the grown‑up in the room.
Then she makes it physical in the most human way possible: she kisses the man she has been calling the enemy all day. Neither moment is elegant, and that is the point.
Dunk does not get a noble, wordless close‑up of fear; he gets a bodily function he cannot control.
Sarah does not get a carefully set‑up romance arc; she gets a messy, impulsive decision that guarantees things will be awkward the next time Bar Harbor shows up with a bat and a grudge.
(Francisco Roman/FOX)
Both scenes drag their characters off the pedestal. They say: this is not a symbol, this is a person whose body and instincts sometimes make absolute fools of them.
There is a version of Best Medicine in which Aunt Sarah stays in the safe aunt box and gently nudges Martin toward growth in every episode. “Take Me Out of the Ballgame” looks at that and says, absolutely not.
Instead, it lets her be petty, ridiculous, and just horny enough to surprise you.
The town might never forgive Martin for breaking Junior’s arm, but somewhere in the bleachers, Aunt Sarah is out there proving she is every bit as chaotic as the man she keeps trying to fix.
What did you think of Aunt Sarah’s big move in “Take Me Out of the Ballgame”? Are you into her weird, bickering chemistry with Eddie, or do you think the kiss crossed a line?
Hit the comments below and tell us how you feel about Best Medicine so far.
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