A toast to mothers
Sunday is Mother's Day, so it's time to give a big thank you and hug to all of the mothers, grandmothers and mother figures in our lives. A personal shout-out to my mother, who is one of the strongest and best people I know. She's always there to answer my frantic texts (i.e. Do these coffee grounds look normal? or Thoughts on this dress??), talk about everything from pop culture to life crises and send me a congratulatory text within 20 minutes of me posting this newsletter every week. One of the hardest parts about moving away from home has been not seeing her on a regular basis, so we text constantly and talk on the phone frequently to bridge the gap. She's my rock and one of my best friends and I'm so grateful she's my mom. And to my grandmother, who is also a newsletter reader. She's caring, funny and strong, and someone I admire in so many ways. In honor of this day, here's a toast to some of the best motherly relationships in pop culture.
Gilmore Girls: I have to put my all-time favorite at the top of the list. Gilmore Girls is my go-to comfort show and one of my favorite parts of the series is the relationship between Lorelai and Rory. Their bond is the core thread throughout the show's seven seasons, and while they have their ups and downs, they always come together to support each other in the end. They consume massive amounts of junk food, hold regular movie nights, talk frequently (and quickly) and have the type of shorthand conversations that only exists between best friends. I see echoes of their friendship in my own relationship with my mom (in fact the episode where Rory goes to college is strikingly similar to my own experience), which is one of the many reasons the show is so special to me.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch: When Sabrina discovers that she's a witch on her 16th birthday, her aunts are there to offer their full support and help with her training. While her birth mother isn't around (and for various witch-related reasons, Sabrina isn't allowed to see her), Hilda and Zelda are always there for her. These two sisters balance each other out. Hilda is fun, street smart and carefree, while Zelda is firm, clever and loving. They would both do anything for Sabrina and help guide her through her crazy teenage years and beyond.
Switched at Birth: This ABC Family (now Freeform) TV show was a stand-out for a lot of reasons, and one of its many triumphs was showing the complicated mother/daughter relationships between Kathryn Kennish, the daughter she raised, Bay, her biological daughter, Daphne, and the woman who raised her, Regina. This complicated child/parent dynamic took years and many seasons to iron out. While Kathryn and Regina sometimes clash when it comes to making parenting decisions, they always worked together in the end. Bay and Daphne each get to know their biological mothers and form a sisterly bond themselves.
Jane the Virgin: I've written at-length about the brilliant Jane the Virgin, so let me just say one more time that the dynamic between the Villanueva women is truly beautiful. This multi-generational story about motherhood celebrates different parenting styles and decisions -- praising Alba and Jane, for example, even when they have different approaches when it comes to raising Jane's son. Since each of the show's leading ladies is a mother, the series does a beautiful job of using flashbacks to show the parallels between their lives as they parent, such as scenes when Xo was giving birth to Jane compared to Jane giving birth to Mateo. It also does a great job of highlighting the role that grandmothers play in our lives, something that isn't seen frequently on TV. Without fail, these three women always come together on their front porch to share their triumphs and tragedies.
Parenthood: There are many relationships to celebrate in the different families that make upParenthood, so I'll just call out a few of my favorites. Monica Potter consistently brings me to tears in her portrayal of Kristina Braverman, especially during her breast cancer storyline in the show's fourth season. Lauren Graham makes it into the list twice for her role as Sarah Braverman. Her character's growth throughout the series and progressing relationship with her two children is fun to watch and her real-life friendship with Mae Whitman and Miles Heizer, who play her kids on the show, adds so much chemistry to their family dynamic. Bonnie Bedelia plays an often thankless role as the family's matriarch, Camille Braverman. She's the glue that holds the whole family together, as a wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother, and isn't celebrated as much as she should be throughout the series.
As Seen on TV
Speaking of strong mother figures... Once Upon a Time is filled with them. The fantasy show is coming to an end on May 18, after seven jam-packed seasons. At the root of Once Upon A Time, once you take out all of the show's extraneous character, you have a story about family and the desire to belong. When it leans into this message, the it's at its strongest. The series starts with Emma Swan, played by the talented Jennifer Morrison (a Chicago-area native!), an orphan who reunites with her son, Henry, who drags her to Storybrooke, Maine to break a fairy tale curse. Along the way, Emma battles with and eventually befriends Henry's adoptive mother, Regina (Lana Parrilla), discovers her parents Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming (Josh Dallas) and finds true love in the form of a handsome pirate, Captain Hook (Colin O'Donoghue). Emma starts the series closed off and afraid to open up and ends with a family, a strong bond with her son and many friends in the town. Her journey is the reason I watched the show for so many seasons, even when the fairy tale aspects of the series went off the rails. The writing staff is made up of a lot of former Buffy and Lost writers, put together those elements plus some Disney magic mixed in, and you have a better sense of the series, which was always much more than a children's show about Snow White. Sure, it got bogged down with flashbacks and the desire to cram in every Disney character ever created (the Frozen cast was difficult to handle...), but at its core, Once Upon a Time was an inspiring story with a lot of heart. It took "villains" and gave them true character arcs, especially for Regina and Captain Hook, always played with care, vulnerability, humor and strength by Lana and Colin, respectively. I haven't tuned in much to the final season, which featured a mini-reboot, as many original cast members only appeared for an episode or two, but I will be watching the series finale, as the entire cast assembles to say good-bye. I'm excited to see the show's conclusion and have no doubt that it will have happy endings in store for Emma and the rest of her fairy tale family.
Haven't You Heard?
Almost a year after it premiered, I finally watched last summer's hit Girls Trip, and boy does it live up to the hype. The film tells the story of four best friends from college aka the Flossy Posse, made up of Ryan (Regina Hall), Sasha (Queen Latifah), Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Dina (Tiffany Haddish). The women are all grown-up now and live fairly separate lives, but they reunite for a trip to the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans and that's where things get a little crazy. Falling into old college patterns, the friends let loose and cause mayhem throughout the city. Along the way, they work through some long-standing issues within the group. It's an ode to female friendship. In one of the final scenes of the movie, it takes one look at her best friends for Ryan to realize she can't continue to pretend to be someone she's not. It's a special moment that speaks to the power of friends -- you can't hide behind a facade in front of the people who truly know you. The movie flawlessly moves from genuine to hilarious raunch in the blink of an eye, partially thanks to breakout star Tiffany Haddish. Girls Trip catapulted Tiffany into fame. Throughout the movie she delivers raunchy joke after raunchy joke, yells at hotel security and finds the humor during the movie's more serious moments. In the press tour that's followed, Tiffany has given delightful interview after delightful interview, and they're all worth checking out.
Bonus Pick: Minute 1:57 of this video is Tiffany's pitch for Girls Trip 2. "Hi Meryl, I want you to be my momma." Perfection.
Required Reading
In honor of John Mulaney's new stand-up special on Netflix, Kid Gorgeous, The Ringer put together a profile of the comedian that explores his stand-up style, why he wears suits on-stage and the hilarious Oh, Hello, which navigated from a sketch to a Broadway show. It's a fun look at his process and style and makes me even more excited to check out the comedy special.
One more recommendation for the week. In the last newsletter, I talked a little bit about the romance writing industry in relation to Jane the Virgin. BuzzFeed published a really interesting look at the racial makeup of the publishing industry and specifically the romance genre: "Even a quick skim of the report showed a clear skew: It concluded that for every 100 romance books published by leading houses in 2016, just 7.8 percent were written by people of color. In the 2017 report, this proportion dropped even further, to 6.2 percent. But one house stayed steady amid the change: Kensington. In fact, one of its titles, Cole’s novel An Extraordinary Union, was the Ripped Bodice’s second-largest-selling title of 2017. The company has forged a chain uncommon in mainstream publishing: an unbroken line of black women, from the novel’s protagonist, via the author, to the editor, to the art director who created the cover art (featuring a black woman)." The article goes on to profile the Kensington Publishing Corporation, the influence of cover art and the importance of ensuring that diversity exists in all aspects of publishing, especially in the sales and marketing departments.
