Yellowjackets’ Shauna is a Terrible Mother
And I can’t help but love that for her
For a minute there, Yellowjackets season three was almost entirely devoid of joy. The once delightfully-perturbed Showtime series, following what’s left of a high school soccer team who engaged in Lord-of-the-Flies shenanigans when their plane crashed in the ‘90s, seemed like it had backed itself into a corner. The series’ most redeemable character Van (played by Six Feet Under’s Lauren Ambrose) is dying of cancer and the rest of the Yellowjackets are isolated, downright sociopathic, and likely fated for a bitter end. The show has certainly picked up in the last few episodes, but overall, watching and rooting for characters is less fun knowing that whatever stage-four-clinger of a satanic force was in those Canadian woods is clearly not letting any of those women out alive.
But I’ve persevered for one reason: it’s so fun watching Melanie Lynskey be a bad mom.
Occasionally, the series takes a break from all the supernatural and the cannibalism and morphs into a family sitcom surrounding Lynskey’s Shauna, her husband Jeff — the high school sweetheart of Shauna’s best friend who she left to freeze to death in the woods... at least she didn’t eat her though. Or did she? I’m losing track of who is eating who these days...— and their teenage daughter Callie. Jeff’s delivery of “There’s no book club??” when he discovers Shauna has been cheating on him, and Callie’s wide-eyed stare realizing her parents have gone off the deep end is a sweet comic relief, but all of it centers around Shauna, whether she’s smoking Callie’s pot stash out her bedroom window while she folds the clothes or mucking up Jeff’s important work dinner because she couldn’t be bothered to suck up to some tech bros. It’s not just that Shauna is a patently bad wife and is traumatizing the hell out of her daughter. What makes her incredible to watch is how little she cares.
Part of this is credit to Lynskey, who is never not delightful and whom I would happily accept as my real-life mom despite1 for years only knowing her as the aunt who molested Logan Lerman’s character in Perks of Being a Wallflower. In Yellowjackets, Lynskey plays Shauna with a passive bitterness that’s somehow also funny and warm. The combination makes you either forget or excuse the fact that she’s insane.
In the latest episode, I watched her sink her teeth into Hilary Swank’s arm without hesitation, rip out a piece of that Million Dollar Baby flesh and attempt to feed it to her (I told you the show picked up....) and I thought, good God was this character always this unhinged? Then I returned to the show’s pilot and realized the first time we see Lynskey on screen, she’s in Callie’s bed with a vibrator, masturbating to a picture of Callie’s teenage boyfriend.
And yet, you never want to see Shauna in a psych ward where she probably belongs. It’s easy to forget that there is clearly something missing from this woman’s psyche when her lines are delivered with Lynskey’s signature shrug. She’s always a half a second shy of a Jim Halpert-style-direct-to-camera grimace. Something about her inherent dissatisfaction unleashed into a casual ferality makes Shauna fun to watch, and it also places her into a specific corner of the canon of bad, yet delicious, motherhood.
It’s no secret that television loves a bad mother, and the trope can serve a lot of purposes. You have the essential and often iconic Livia Sopranos and the Elis Greys who help explain why a central character is so fucked up, but whose cruelty is not all that fun to watch. Although getting into the absurdity of just how deeply these women hate their children can be fun in a shocking, I-can’t-believe-she-said-that kind of way. Patricia Clarkson tells Amy Adams in Sharp Objects, “And that’s why I never loved you, I hope that’s some comfort to you.” Lady Caroline admits callously to Shiv Roy that she wishes she’d just had dogs.
Then you have the main character moms who are just figuring it out: The Midge Maisels or the moms in Good Girls who feel as if their entire identity has been snuffed out by their children and they want to reclaim it, those kids be damned! They’re sympathetic and relatable. Even when they really mess up, we don’t fault them for it.
But somehow Shauna’s behavior is too irredeemable on its face to fit into this category. A more apt comparison might be Betty Draper from Mad Men. January Jones plays Betty with a similar boredom and insolence as Shauna. Both women are bitter about their situations and resentful that they’re locked up in the suburbs. Betty, with that porcelain skin, could have been a model. Instead she’s stuck with two toddlers she doesn’t care for and a husband who constantly disappears to cheat on her. It can be fun to watch both women, in quiet protest, simply ignore their children’s wants and needs. You have to laugh at Betty reproaching her daughter Sally for wearing a plastic garment bag over her head, not because she might suffocate but because the dress it was holding is likely on the ground somewhere.
But Betty’s position as a woman in the ‘50s who had children when she was still a child herself (one of the best line deliveries on the show is when Betty cries, “I’m an orphan!” after her father dies, really giving us an insight into how she views herself) is inherently sympathetic, even if her actions aren’t excusable. Betty is a tragic character. Shauna is not. Shauna’s neglect isn’t just a side effect of her suffering, it’s a source of her power. She makes her choices so confidently, completely disinterested in their consequences. Her movements look like fireworks, and watching those fireworks, I couldn’t help but think of another bad Showtime mom near and dear to my heart: Nancy Botwin.
Does this name not ring a bell? Follow me in a time machine back to 2005. People were buying up houses on subprime mortgages, my third grade class was watching Pope John Paul II’s funeral broadcast live on one of those old, boxy TVs, Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight was just hitting bookshelves and Mary Louise Parker was selling weed to her neighbors in a California suburb. No one talks about Weeds anymore, but I think about it often. Maybe because, even though there’s much debate about Carrie Bradshaw’s2 status as a villain, Nancy Botwin was the first clear-cut female antihero I had seen commanding a TV show.
Nancy starts the series as a recently widowed mother of two. Her late husband, played by expert-dead-guy Jeffery Dean Morgan, had provided her with a cushy (soon to be KUSHy, am I right?) lifestyle as a stay-at-home mom in the suburbs and it was one she wanted to hold on to even as her grief took all sorts of strange shapes. So she did the most logical thing: She started selling weed. The show turns into a high-stakes dramedy as Nancy gets pulled into crazy situations, all while haphazardly raising her two sons who are simply along for the ride.
Nancy shares a lot of similarities with Shauna. Two sarcastic yet subdued brunettes who have a hunger for chaos and destruction (self- and otherwise). As a result, both women turn their seemingly normal suburban family into accomplices to murder (among other crimes). These family bonding experiences are, in reality, traumatic for everyone involved, but when they’re happening on a little box in the hillside while Nancy is sucking on one of those cunty iced coffees and rolling her eyes at her brother-in-law Andy, it’s a hoot.
Both actresses play the characters with a snarky but affable disinterest. They invite all of this torment into their lives, but when it arrives at their doorstep they act like it’s simply happening to them, riding the misfortune like a wave. This makes the two women accessible. Who among us has not greeted the consequences of our own actions with a chuckle and a nod? A passive acceptance of, “yep, that tracks. I’m in this situation now and I guess I gotta rock with it.”
But motherhood complicates the instinct to just lie belly-down on the carpet and hope your demons take you in one piece. These kids become a nuisance as both Shauna and Nancy get wrapped up in whatever backdoor revelry is demanding their attention. Neither woman can entirely wiggle free from her maternal duties, so as a result, the kids are swept up in the mess as well.
This should be a point of dramatic contention. But sometimes, there’s something funny and even pleasurable watching Nancy and Shauna swat away their responsibilities to their children in favor of their own self interests. In general, it’s fun watching a character act entirely on instinct, to imagine for a moment what it would be like not to be weighed down by a million different considerations before making a decision. When that character is a mother, it’s a test of how deep that freedom runs.
I made the connection between Shauna and Nancy when remembering an interview Mary Louise Parker3 gave years ago about her Weeds character. When asked what she liked about the role, she described Nancy as “a flawed mother. And that’s just sort of taboo to depict a mother that in any way is putting her children in danger. You’re not meant to empathize or get into the psyche of a mother who is not necessarily putting her children first.”
There’s obviously a feminist undertone to taking pleasure in watching a woman like this on screen. Motherhood has, for centuries, been the role a woman is expected to play. And although it is a job, a harrowing and important job, it’s not treated like one. Even today, women aren’t paid for their domestic labor. They are supposed to not only be willing servants to the little chickens they pushed out of their bodies but feel lucky, privileged to wait on them hand and foot. As a result, we’re used to watching mothers on screen who are trying desperately to connect with their kids just to be spurned. When those mothers do finally revolt, their children act betrayed and the women are forced to beg for forgiveness. Powerlessness, every step of the way.
So to watch Shauna and Nancy be entirely defiant of this, to be wholly unapologetic about not putting their children first, and get away with it, is cathartic.
Stepping into their psyche, we get to experience what it’s like to genuinely not give a fuck. And that aura entirely shifts their relationship to their children. Their neglect leaves room for personhood. They’re not just a mother in their kids’ eyes, they’re mysterious, unknowable and thus endlessly fascinating. Even as Callie is acting up, seducing a hapless cop4 or getting Misty (Christina Ricci) drunk off her ass at a sleepover, she’s doing it because Shauna is all she thinks about. She’s obsessed with knowing more about her, what happened to her in the woods, what she’s capable of. Likewise, Nancy’s sons Silas and Shane follow her down every twisted rabbit hole, whether it’s to an apartment in New York City or the den of a Mexican drug cartel.
I’d imagine it’s triggering for anyone who actually has a mother like Nancy or Shauna to watch all this toxicity unfold. But it’s easy as a viewer to almost mimic the child-mother relationship we see on screen, orbiting around these sirens against our better instincts, giving them endless chances yet almost delighting in the sheer audacity when they disappoint us. It’s maybe in part because we understand them in the context of feminism and motherhood, but I also think the withholding nature of these women makes everyone around them desperate for their love. I can’t help it. Watching them light a match, walk away and forget about it immediately is like a rush of dopamine.
But it’s the kind of fun that only works in the middle of a show. I already feel it fading in Yellowjackets. Because after all, Shauna and Nancy are both antiheroes. Their selfishness is addictive to watch in the moment, but we know how it ends.
Weeds concludes with Nancy abandoned by the sons and the brother-in-law who loved her. It had been eight-seasons coming and as viewers, we were also sick of her. Now, I see Yellowjackets pushing Shauna down a similar dark road she won’t be coming back from. In the most recent episode, we see Callie and Jeff come to the realization that something is irreparably wrong with the woman they can’t help but center their lives around.
As a compassionate person, I hope they break free from the cycle of chaos. But as a viewer, I’m clinging to that firework of a mom, and when she inevitably goes up in flames, I’ll still remember her fondly.
B Plot
Who is your favorite bad TV mom?
Mallika: Well of course it’s going to be Mother to all, Lily van der Woodsen. Her kids really tried to make her feel like Gossip Girl’s worst mom on that first iconic Thanksgiving just for suggesting they eat Peking duck and a pumpkin because she couldn’t cook a turkey. Who among us can cook a turkey??? She would go on to commit her son to a mental institution against his will and then tell everyone he was visiting a relative in Florida (not a very likely excuse for a VDW). And, yes, she sent an innocent man to prison so that Serena could get into a good high school… you can’t say she didn’t ride for those kids. She ended up with a Baldwin, so I suppose she got what was coming to her.
Rachel: All of the moms I have already mentioned in this newsletter are near and dear to my heart. Another honorable mention could be Moira Rose, or Matt’s mom in The Vampire Diaries who also plays a terrible mom in the O.C. The way a plot of sleeping with her child’s friend/boyfriend hates to see that woman coming. And I have to say… Parker Posey is really making history with that North Carolina accent on White Lotus right now. PIPER NOO.
C Plot
Law and Order: SVU is making a fat deal about the fact that they have a “historic” new showrunner and it’s literally just… a woman. Michele Fazekas is taking over the reins as it heads into season 27 (yes). Perhaps the fact that a woman hasn’t been in charge at this franchise at any point in the last two decades is an especially heinous crime in and of itself.
There’s so much to talk about with this season of White Lotus — and you know we can’t stop yapping so we will have a WL essay soon and no it’s not about those brothers… this is HBO, people, get a grip. But one thing we can’t stop thinking about are all the books the characters are taking to the pool. For some reason the funniest one is Laurie reading Modern Lovers by Emma Straub… oh this girl really needed a vacation. Too bad.
In other White Lotus news, we now have someone to blame for the new theme song: Mike White. The show’s composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer told The New York Times that he had wanted a longer song that eventually got to the more recognizable melody from the first two seasons, but White said no. The whole interview is so messy, including a declaration from the composer that he’s not coming back for season four. Our favorite quote, which is in reference to the angry outcries from fans about the theme song change this season: “I don’t think everybody was really aware of how attached people were to the ooh-loo-loo-loos.”
Separately, we’re being targeted by Patrick Schwarzenegger’s protein bar (?) company and he is simply not beating the allegations that he’s actually Saxon Ratliff.
Amy Sherman-Palladino is back this month with Étoile, a series about two of the most-renowned ballet companies in the world swapping their top dancers. We will be watching and not only because it’s starring Luke Kirby who you’ll probably recognize as Lenny Bruce from Sherman-Palladino’s latest hit The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (though that certainty helps). We’re seeing a lot of people saying that Étoile is for people who like Emily in Paris and that’s not sitting right with our spirit. Anyway, justice for Bunheads.
and despite me loving my own mom, who, by the way, has requested we read these newsletters out loud and record them so she can listen on her Bluetooth headphones at work. We won’t be doing that, but God bless her.
Weeds creator Jenji Kohan was also a writer on Sex and the City... and she went on to make Orange is the New Black. Major supporter of women’s rights and their wrongs...
Who, as I have said many times on this newsletter, Billy Crudup famously cheated on and left for Clare Danes while she was pregnant, and what’s AMAZING is Jennifer Jason Leigh, who was famously also cheated on and left by another mediocre man (Noah Bombach) for a younger blonde (Greta Gerwig) plays her sister in Weeds! Two maligned three-named women we just don’t talk about enough.
played by John Reynolds, who I saw at a bar in Brooklyn Heights over the weekend but that’s neither here nor there.
Shauna is up there as a bad mom for sure but what about Tai in Yellowjackets? She basically abandoned her wife and kid to go live her teenage romance fantasy with Van.
One of the worse tv moms I can think of right now is Meredith's mom in Grey's Anatomy.