What We Can Learn From The Chaotic Parents Of '90s TV
Turns out, some valuable lessons were hiding in all that drama, trauma, and teen angst.
Television raised me. I mean, not literally; my parents raised me — but television had a real hand in it. Maybe because I was a chronically indoor kid, or maybe because I was a young, impressionable tween wildly critical of own parents' "oppressive" rules (likely a little of column A and a little of column B), I took considerable interest in the parental characters on my favorite shows: how they reacted, taught, evolved… and how they messed up. And the parents I loved on TV messed up a lot.
Rewatching some of my favorite shows now, I realized something: So many of the shows I grew up enjoying had chaotic (Felicity; Sister, Sister), absentee parents (Sabrina the Teenage Witch) or, honestly, no parents at all (Party of Five). In their own way, I believe that these "bad TV parents" were culture's passive way of guiding and empowering millennials to make their own choices as we navigated and processed a veritable minefield of video games, '90s politics, and the powerful pull of the (early) internet.
Who were they, and how did they put their TV sons and daughters into a TV-lifetime of TV therapy, and yet let us — the young, impressionable, Delias-clad viewers — come out better for it? Let's get into it.
Gail Leery, Dawson's Creek
While Joey, Pacey, Dawson, and Jen had their own share of wild messiness, Dawson's mother, Gail Leery, comes out the gate chaotic on the WB series Dawson's Creek. Played by Mary-Margaret Humes, the glamorous local news anchor Gail is literally gallivanting around tiny Capeside, Massachusetts, with her side piece/co-anchor: taking him out for drinks, buying him suits, fornicating — you name it — while the men in her life (Dawson, and his sad but earnest dad, Mitch) sit in their own denial for nearly a full season of TV (that's a 90's season of 22 episodes, folks — a long time).
By the end of Season 1, every other character knows what's going on; they're just trying to find a way to tell Dawson that will truly get through to him. Dawson's friends eventually succeed in notifying Dawson of his mom's sexy double life, and the Leerys get unceremoniously divorced in Season 2.
The Lesson
Dawson's community never gave up on sharing those hard truths with their friend: a straightforward lesson resulting from bad parental behavior, if there ever was one.
Ray Campbell and Lisa Landry, Sister, Sister
The parental chaos is literally in the premise of WB's Sister, Sister. First of all, what kind of Miss Hannigan-bullsh*t is it to separate identical twin siblings? Do people do that? And beyond that, what kind of parental strangers think, "Hey, my daughter saw another girl who looks just like her on the street — mayyyyybe we should all move to the suburbs together?"
I would personally place more blame on Ray (played by Tim Reid), who willingly let wild-ass Lisa (played by the iconic Jackée Harry) and Tia into his demure home without doing a little recon first, but they all seemed to make it work. Tia and Tamera went to college, got boyfriends, and even repaired some massive familial rifts over the show's six seasons.
The (Very Millennial) Lesson
When parents take risks, their children (us) are better and more successful for it. Trust!
Every Parent on Felicity
In a show about time-traveling college students with academic ennui, maybe it's not so surprising that every parent is a complete trainwreck. Where to even begin? We've got Dr. Edward and Barbara Porter, who are in deep denial about their loveless marriage and codependency on their only child (so much so that Dr. Ed literally follows his daughter to New York, crashing close to her dorm while he ignores the impending end of his marriage).
We have Ben Covington's dad, Andrew, a duplicitous conman struggling with alcoholism while manipulating the emotions of both Ben and his mother, who'd been abused by the guy for decades (it's a testament to Jason Ritter's charm that I still like the guy after his Felicity stint). Then there are Megan Rotondi's parents, who are just rich a$$holes, and Sean Blumberg's parents, who are low-class scammers. The icing on the cake: Elena's dad's whole character arc in Season 3 is his disinterest in his daughter's academic achievements.
The Lesson
Per the world of Felicity, having bad parents who are both clingy and absentee creates very attractive children with fantastic hair, ones who eventually find their calling in life by learning from the mistakes of their elders. Not a bad lesson (unless, of course, you're Elena pre-time jump, and die in a car crash — spoiler alert).
Diana Spellman, Sabrina The Teenage Witch
Not only is she mortal (ugh), but Diana Spellman, mother of Sabrina Spellman, is always away on an archeological dig in Peru, leaving her beloved treasure of a daughter with two kindly yet dangerous practicing witches. Are the witches family? Yes. But do they often rope a minor into dangerous acts of witchcraft? Also yes.
The Lesson
Even before STTW, the absentee or deceased mother was kind of a TV/Disney trope; here, it was a lesson that when mortal moms are away, the witches will play — so, permission to get creative and let our little tween freak flags fly!
Nobody, Party of Five
The five Salinger siblings literally have no parents, what with them tragically being killed in a drunk driving accident in downtown San Francisco. As a result, the five children — aged from 24 years down to 1) — must run their parents' business together. It's a truly insane premise, but an empowering one; for my middle school self, it was like watching adults play house… but for real.
The Lesson
Though the show quickly goes off the rails in a train of after-school-special-like premises, it makes young viewers feel that, with enough siblings, friends, and flannels, you can really do anything you put your mind to.
The Big Takeaway
The '90s were a crazy time, and navigating them as a young adult was even crazier. As I watch these shows now, I'm really impressed by how these messy parental figures slipped lessons (mostly undetected) into my young and impressionable TV-viewing self. As if almost by their very existence, they were determined to teach us kids life lessons with a stern yet gentle cinematic hand. A real do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do situation, you know?
