Warning: Contains spoilers for Mare of Easttown and Hacks.
In the mid to late 1980s, my mom and I had an evening routine. After dinner, we’d gather in the family room -- she in her pastel space-dyed armchair, me on the matching sofa -- to watch the evening’s primetime shows. Who’s The Boss?, Growing Pains, Moonlighting, Perfect Strangers, Kate & Allie, Head of the Class, Max Headroom, Designing Women.
We didn’t talk as we watched them, though we did laugh together pretty often. My mom was usually sewing a piece of her latest quilt project, or had one of the cats draped across her lap, while I curled up on the couch. I loved the easy escape these shows provided, someone to tell me stories in the hours between dinner and bedtime. When the shows featured teens, I felt a kinship with many of the girls and crushed on the boys, including Kirk Cameron, George Clooney (who was occasionally on Facts of Life), Michael J. Fox and Brad Pitt (who guest starred in an episode of Growing Pains).
Even when there weren’t any kids, I often found something to like. The banter and sexual tension on Moonlighting. The futuristic mysteries of Max Headroom. I liked Designing Women because it included Annie Potts, who I’d loved in Ghostbusters and Pretty in Pink. But I can see why my mom liked it, too: it depicts an all-woman interior design firm in Atlanta, not far from where my mom grew up in Smyrna. Its leader was the tough, funny, resolute Julia Sugarbaker, played by Dixie Carter. I don’t know which of the women was my mom’s favorite, but I wonder if she had a soft spot for Jean Smart’s character, Charlene Frazier, whose highlighted blonde hair matched my mom’s.
My mom died when I was 22, before I had the chance to have an adult relationship with her. I still think about her all the time, and wonder what we would talk about if she were still around. Would she still have the same sharp, punny sense of humor? Would she have adapted to using a smartphone, so we could text each other? Would we still enjoy some of the same television shows?
I recently watched Mare of Easttown and Hacks, both featuring Jean Smart, and found myself wanting to talk to my mom about them.
I wonder what she would have thought of Helen, the angry, sarcastic matriarch Smart plays on Mare. Like her, would my mom be addicted to mobile games and snarking? Would my mom have laughed at Helen’s trick of hiding ice cream in a frozen veggie bag as much as I did? And what about Deborah Vance in Hacks? Would my mom giggle at all those cringey, dated Vegas jokes, or admire Vance’s unshakeable poise and confidence?
In some ways, watching these shows allowed me to feel into the relationships between younger women and the doyennes Smart plays. In Mare it’s a literal mother and daughter, and Kate Winslet’s titular character is roughly my age, in her mid to late 40s. They live together, jointly caring for Mare’s daughter and grandson, quietly looking after each other through a thick layer of emotional reserve. They are central to a close-knit community where Helen had an affair with a neighbor and Mare’s investigating crimes that involve or implicate her friends. We lived in a similar small town, where my mom worked as an assistant at my elementary school and we couldn’t go into any shop for months after her death without hearing how much the staff missed her.
With Hacks it’s less clear-cut. Ava, the young woman who begins working as a writer for Vance, is at least 20 years younger than I am, and much more brassy and loudmouthed than I ever was. Ava and Deborah slowly become friends, in part, because they are able to stand up to each other’s cutting remarks. I never could have done that, but then again my mom was kind-hearted, nothing like Smart’s hard-shelled Deborah. But as Ava learns more about Deborah’s life and career, I recognize my efforts to discover more about the life my mom rarely talked about. Ava eventually helps Deborah remember and embrace her whole self in a way I wish my mom and I could have done for each other.
There are scenes in both series where these pairs open up to each other. In the final episode of Mare, after a family dinner at a local pizza parlor, Helen tells Mare, “Truth is, I was angry a lot. I was angry that your father wasn’t the person I thought I’d married, and I was angry that I couldn’t fix him, and I took a lot of that out on you. I’m sorry, Mare.” “I forgive you, Mom,” Mare replies. “Good, because I forgave myself a long time ago,” Helen says, before starting to cry.
In Hacks, after Deborah and Ava have a fight so intense you’re sure it’s the end of their friendship and working relationship, Deborah comes to Ava’s dad’s funeral. In Ava’s childhood bedroom, they talk about grief and they make each other laugh even as they’re making each other cry. They move through the kind of reconciliation that I wish I could experience with my mom. We never got to talk, openly, on equal footing. I was always a kid.
It’s possible that if she were still alive we wouldn’t be watching the same shows, or having the kinds of conversations I imagine. But that’s okay. Seeing these series and getting to picture what we’d say to each other about them makes me feel like she’s still with me.