Remember when Nancy said she thinks her parents never loved each other and only got married to support the nuclear family idea? We can see when they were in their teens back in the day it’s hinted they were in love at some point but as the years went on he stopped giving her attention
But thats no excuse for her going after a minor
Yeah no matter what's going on in her marriage, whether it's unsatisfying or lacking passion or boring or whatever, there's zero excuse for her not only being flirty with someone her own daughter's age but making a coordinated effort with a group of her friends to learn his job schedule and doll up to run out there and ogle and pose when he was on shift.
There's also just no reason for it to be written in to the show in general, other than the brothers and Levy seeming to have a weird thing for it, with Levy even enthusiastically saying "I feel like the world wants that! The world NEEDS that!" (🤢) And one of the brothers (I think Matt? I can never tell them apart lmao) adding "Oh yeah I think it'd be hot. Yeah, just simple hot." and then going on to laugh about it and talk about how Ted isn't satisfying Karen. Here's a clip, in case you wanna hear these weirdos say it out loud:
It's so clearly just a weird thing they're all into because if Karen HAD to have the 'unsatisfied wife has an affair' arc to realize the importance of her family to her, they could've easily written in an age appropriate love interest. Hell, if they really wanted to take the older woman/younger man angle that bad, they still could've given her one that was maybe five, ten years younger than her. Not someone who's young enough to have graduated the same year as her own daughter.
And if they really, really just couldn't avoid making her flirt with Billy, how about some real consequences or guilt or even just acknowledgement that what she did was gross, and not only that, inadvertently lead to him being violated, tortured, and later killed?
But no, they wouldn't do that. What happened between her and Billy was "hot" to them, and in their minds Billy deserved what came to him anyway, so they just lumped that storyline into that stupid thing they've been trying to sell us for years now where they frame her as this girlboss supermom who hates her bum husband.
I'll never fall for that lie though. And while Ted kinda sucks, yeah, Karen will always be worse to me. Because even if Ted's a bit lazy and uninvolved, at least he's either at work or playing golf or home with their children, instead of at the pool every day stalking and trying to seduce and have an affair with an 18 year old. 🥴
