0086 - Mother (and Baby) (Patreon)

*ahem* Let's strike the previous post from the record...

Marge talks to a couple of characters at the picnic in this episode, perhaps it was a real attempt to give her friends and a social life outside of her family. This mother is a unique character that as far as I can tell has no further appearances, although if it were later I imagine she'd be replaced with someone like Luann Van Houten.

Soon the writers lean into the idea that Marge is at her core quite a plain, boring person, and derive humour from this where they can, but a sad side effect of this is that often she can come across as lonely. Her social life is rarely explored, and even when it is, it's often from the perspective of "hey isn't it strange that Marge, by default, has no friends?"

As discussed before, I think this is because the male writers of the show might struggle to relate to a mother in her thirties. Instead of fleshing out this perspective, they chose to make her a mother and little more. But here we see them flirting with the idea of going in a different direction with Marge. Maybe in an alternate version of the show this lady became Marge's closest confidant.

This post is part of my "Every Simpsons Character Ever" series. For a list of my rules in this project, click here.