Aging & Wisdom Quote by William Devane

There is a quiet grief baked into Devane's phrasing: not outrage, not scandal, just the disappointed sigh of someone watching a character miss the exit ramp to adulthood. "It would have been nice" is doing heavy lifting. It frames the Laura relationship as a kind of earned destiny, a narrative payoff the audience was primed to want, and it positions Devane (and by extension, the viewers) as invested caretakers of Greg's growth rather than mere consumers of plot.

The real bite comes from the moral geometry of "mature" versus "juvenile". Devane isn't just ranking love interests; he's diagnosing a creative choice. Greg "was moving toward that already" suggests an arc in progress - a slow conversion from impulsive masculinity to something steadier, more accountable. Then "took a turn" implies a regression, like the writers yanked the wheel for drama. Paige becomes shorthand for a familiar TV temptation: the exciting detour that keeps a character interesting but also keeps him emotionally adolescent.

Subtextually, Devane is critiquing an industry habit of mistaking turbulence for vitality. Long-running stories often fear stability because stability can look like closure, and closure can look like the end of a show. So the character gets nudged back into mess, into "juvenile" entanglements that generate conflict quickly. Devane's comment reads like an actor's frustration with that treadmill: growth was on the table, and the table got flipped because immaturity makes for easier episodes.