| abstract | - The situation wherein one character has deeply wronged (or thinks s/he has deeply wronged) another member of the main cast, frequently in a Dead Pet Sketch or Broken Treasure plot. Worse, everyone else seems to know it except for the person they've wronged, and that isn't helping them prepare to face the music. Eventually, with a half-hearted 'I'll pay for your funeral' from the other members of the cast, s/he steps forward to tell the other character what they've done wrong... ...and the offended party doesn't even mind, or it's not as big a deal as suspected, or they knew all along and were just waiting for a confession. Whatever the reason, it's not nearly so dramatic as it had been expected. This builds up a sense of tension, but resolves in a fairly heartwarming fashion, so all that tension feeds into our good feelings. (Well, either that, or it's anticlimactic, lame, or even aggravating.) It can end in a Shrug Take, but it doesn't always - it can simply be that the wronged character decides to forgive and forget, or that (s)he already knew and has come to terms with it off-screen, and is typically a meaningful character moment. May often be prompted by the character receiving the confession having previously learnt of something even worse hanging over them beforehand (such as, say, a terminal illness); under normal circumstances they may have blown up, but have recently been prompted to reassess their priorities about what's 'really' important. Named (by Eric Burns-White) for Randy Milholland of Something Positive, who does this quite frequently. Not to be confused with the lesbian relationship in Mulholland Drive. Examples of Milholland Relationship Moment include:
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