I actually enjoy Carrie being a bad mom, and it furthers a narrative I have that women shouldnāt be persuaded to have children they donāt want (which is what happened with Carrie, Maggie, and their father). Iām only 4 seasons in and I know people despise her motherhood (or lack thereof) arc, but it is a cold hard truth that there are women out there who arenāt suited to be moms.
The fact that Carrie didnāt become this insanely loving and caring mother is something I havenāt seen before in TV and the fact that the writers didnāt give her character a complete overhaul was great, no matter how anger inducing it is to some.
I think this is a very interesting and valid response but over the years I've become so jaded on this topic.
While I completely agree that women shouldn't be persuaded to have children they don't want, the show never underlines this point. Ever. Never ever ever. The scene in 4.02 when Maggie is scolding Carrie for leaving and says "there's not even a diagnosis for what's wrong with you" is one of the most heinous things this show ever did. And yet Maggie was depicted as righteous! truthful! for it, when Carrie told them all exactly how it would would be and exactly what would happen. The moralizing continued throughout the season with Quinn especially. There was never any reckoning that Carrie had been pressured to have this kid that she didn't want or that she was suffering from postpartum depression. She was just cold and unfeeling, "The Drone Queen," and she needed only time and a shock to the system and whatever-the-fuck to come to her senses and learn to love Franny, which is what happens by season's end.
More fundamentally, the show was never interested or invested in Carrie being a mother. The writers only gave Carrie a kid to ~keep Brody's memory alive on the show~. In that respect, she was merely a vessel for Brody's likeness, Franny's red hair being the ultimate "fuck you" to Carrie (which she acknowledges in season six).
Season after season, the writers wrestled with The Franny Problem, which had at its core the dilemma of how to depict a woman who fundamentally does not want to be a mother (maternal qualities can be learned, and Carrie certainly does learn them, but the show could never get past the fact that this child was ultimately unwanted by both Carrie and the audience) while not also completely alienating audiences. In other words: in order to stay true to your main character, you needed to show that a woman who does not want to be a mother, but then is pressured to become one, is absent from her child's life at best (seasons 4, 5) and abusive (seasons 6, 7) at worst. The problem with absence is it just makes Franny a token, therefore undermining that it was some feminist pursuit to begin with. The problem with abuse.... well there are so many, but one is that it absolutely exhausts the audience and pushes them to hate your main character, when you actually need your audience to at least partially root for her! It was Claire Danes who had to stand up for Carrie and Franny during the production of season 7 and tell Alex Gansa enough was enough and they needed to take this shit seriously.
When they finally put The Franny Probem to rest, I say without exaggeration that every viewer of the show breathed a massive sigh of relief.
