See you had to say something about Barbara’s behavior, and now you’ve got me thinking about Barbara’s behavior, and my literally favorite thing is taking behaviors given in canon anything and working backwards to try and find the source, and I bet you I could peg her backstory like a fly to a wall if there was any thought put into it.
People like to gripe that Barbara has WAY too nice of a house for a single mother, even a single doctor. I’m also too lazy to find the clip, but I’m pretty sure that when Toby talks about Jim’s dad to Blinky, he mentions that he and his girlfriend ran off to some resort together, which means that’s something he could afford, or was in social circles to meet someone who could afford it. Barbara gets her son a kitchen appliance for his birthday, which can be very expensive, and her complaints about the vehicle were less about price and more about his safety. Her house is also WAY to clean to be kept up by a teen, even one as responsible as Jim, especially when things get more destructive or busy, so she probably has a maid come in every once in a while to scrub grout.
Barbara lives an upper middle class life, at worst, on a salary that’s easily 350,000 bucks a year, and claims every now and again that she keeps needing to pick up hours.
She not only lives at this quality of life, but she’s used to it enough to worry when it’s threatened rather than downsize in REALLY OBVIOUS ways, so she probably comes from a place of decent wealth.
She also looks very young for her age, and her marital split could be blamed on her need to focus obsessively on her career, but if Jim’s father was anything but absolute scum and actually had the bond with his son that the show claims, that’s the sort of thing that can be worked around successfully, even if it’s breaking up and co parenting.
But if Jim’s father and Barb were just completely incompatible, say… two young kids who thought they were romeo and juliet and married young without feeling out a relationship first, then yeah, Jim was at about the right age for that to be falling apart.
So she come’s from a place of wealth, with a great big house and a nice car and a really great foundation and what I’m saying here is that Barb has probably never ever at all been without financial support in her life.
And she married young into a loving marriage and when that split her son IMMEDIATELY took up the emotional role that her husband once took.
yes, I’m saying that Jim was her emotion husband I’m trying to make it sound not gross but there it is.
Which yeah it’s a great narrative, lonely mom and awesome son come together after being abandoned by the world/a guy but from a real life perspective it’s not good. But ultimately Barb has also never been without some kind of emotional support either. Barb has never learned to really function on her own
And Barb… is not a giver, she’s a taker. She was raised right, that’s for sure. She’s aware of how much she’s taking up from other people. She knows she’s putting Jim in a position of responsibility she shouldn’t, but it’s necessary to keep their quality of life (again, a place of wealth, downgrading doesn’t occur to her at all) She also loves and lives for her job, but it’s ok as long as Jim is ok with it (she tells herself she’ll change it if Jim is ever not ok with it, but he’ll never not be ok with it, this is how he was literally raised) She knows she lets a lot of her emotional burdens off on Strickler with little reciprocation a lot, she states it right out in a lot of their one on ones, but he’s ok with it so, so is she. She doesn’t give, she takes, and her version of giving is “taking less if someone asks me to”
She knows she needs to give in relationships, but she’s always been so nurtured that she’s literally never learned to do that, and that’s especially apparent when Jim’s life starts to fall apart in the latter series.
Bringing back the awful term “emotion husband” (and I’d like to clarify here that I don’t mean this in any way as incestuous), it’s really apparent that Barb treats her son as an emotional equal (there it is, the better term!). The show makes no qualms about Jim having at least some degree in jealousy on Strickler taking up a space he once occupied in his own mother’s life.
And when Strickler enters her life and starts to fill her emotional needs in a much more gratifying way, and also probably any other needs she might have been craving in a relationship, safely, she now starts acting on all those promises to let her kid be a kid that she’s been telling herself all Jim’s life.
But again, Barb is very bad at giving.
She expects Jim to be the mature adult that she’s been treating him. She’s a doctor, but her mind never goes to a lot of the really bad places that she knows, as in probably has personal experience seeing as an upper class California doctor, that kids like Jim get drawn into shitty things like drugs and bullying and gangs all the time, but not her kid because he knows better.
She also expects Jim to be the kid he’s supposed to be, even though he’s never been treated this way. She’s finally giving him this, and his response is to pull away from it like it burns, and it’s frustrating.
Barb also very much perceives herself as the parental authority, because it’s never been questioned before. Of course her son is going to come to her with his issues, it’s her place as a parent. Except he’s never had the kind of issues he’d prefer she not be a part of so she doesn’t know how to get him to open up. Of course he’s going to respect her authority for things like grounding, except she’s let him have equal responsibilities and free run in the house and has absolutely no sway in setting his boundaries. Of course he should be ok with her dating his teacher, they had got along fine until that moment and he should recognize her ability to judge people (also on the side for complexity he’s always been supportive of her happiness and the abrupt turn around probably seems like a direct attack on this again, she tends to view Jim as an equal partner)
So she’s making a conscious effort to treat her kid like a kid, gets frustrated when he responds like an equal, and then automatically responds like he’s an equal in turn (cold shoulder and such are BAD responses in equal relationships, but that’s where they typically show up, and Barb has the relationship fixing skills of a teenager because that all she’s ever needed)
I’m not saying she’s doing it on purpose or is stupid or bad. She actually seems more than aware of what she needs to be doing theoretically, but her very nature as a taker in relationships has never being questioned seriously, her lack of experience in stressful situations like this and in relationships in general, Barb just… doesn’t know what to do, and it’s all coming to a head at once. These are the kinds of issues that should have been dealt with a long time ago and at a very slow pace, and Barb just doesn’t know how to get there or how to even start.
And what’s sad is that in all this mess is that Jim is acting exactly as he’s been raised. He is essentially keeping house, and trying to keep Barb’s life stress free, but on a huge level by pushing her as far away from the danger and stress as he can. He’s forcing his home life to be as normal as possible for her, and he’s using her own logic of “it’s ok if it’s a bit sucky now we’ll work it out later when things are better” to justify his disregard of authority. He also views his mother as an emotional equal, and is sure she’ll understand when the time comes, so what she says now, like “you’re grounded”, it doesn’t matter.
tldr: Barb views her child as both and equal partner, and as a child under her authority, and there was literally no response Jim could have possibly made to her actions that would have justified both of those mindsets. She’s also got the relationship stress reactions of a 13 year old which only serves to upset her authority more. She means well, but just plain doesn’t have the skills as a parent or as an adult needed to respond the way she should be
(after point) On the final note of Barb never being without emotional support, I’m really interested in season 2 because of this. Either Jim will be back right away throwing away a good plot potential and nothing will change (BOOOOO HISSSSSSS), Barb will have to learn how to cope with being alone as a human being and have some personal growth just in time to become a better and more supportive parent (probably not, having an authority figure in his life that is no doubtingly against fighting to the death is against kid power fantasy rules)
Or she’s going to go running to the first sign of emotional support she can grab onto, and the reversal for the life merging spell suggests that she only looses her memories up until the point the spell was cast.
So her son is gone and the one person she was gradually relying on well, the latest memories of him were of tea and small meetings, the last date before the first kiss. The framing of his apologies and his agony when the spell was broken also hints that those will be embedded into Barb’s psyche and possibly reoccur. Strickler is probably a GREAT idea in her mind. I will not be surprised at all if she reaches out to him and convinces him to be part of season 2. not necessarily the healthiest choice, but it’s convenient for the plot!
holy shit dude you wrote a whole essay on this. first of all thanks cuz uh wow good job!
also a lot of this you’re seriously not wrong on and i’m just like ‘yeaaaaahhh pretty much’.
