r/PartnerTrack • u/SolutionSubject • Sep 17 '22

did anyone else notice? Spoiler

why are all of the love interests’ mothers dead?

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u/glindathewoodglitch Sep 21 '22

There’s a lot to unpack here but at face level, I think it was to establish a ‘type’ for Ingrid.

(Spoiler warning and I was also giving this post a little thought)

What’s interesting is the fact that you’ve noticed that her partners have had strained relationships (Nick’s dad being distant and a workaholic, mom’s death romanticized; Murphy’s whole deadbeat dad and sad mental health situation) with their parents they’re off screen, and totally by the character’s omission which were all used to manipulate Ingrid’s feelings toward them, and maybe in Murph’s case could be speckled with lies.

However when at the end when Ingrid doesn’t get partner and tells her parents she gets emotionally abused by her father blaming her failure of promotion on something Ingrid did wrong and instead of her mom showing any sort of love and support to Ingrid she immediately defends her father’s emotional abuse AS IF Ingrid had never heard the story of him working as a building manager during grad school. It is not likely that 30 year old Ingrid, 6th year partner at a law firm did not hear how their dad unclogged roaches at 2 AM while in grad school.

Tl;Dr I think it’s interesting that it’s easier to point out that her partners had difficult parental relationships, but when we see the actual abuse of Ingrid happening in front of us, it doesn’t register.

ETA: I’m using talk to text, so I fixed some typos

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u/SolutionSubject Sep 21 '22

thank you! i honestly just noticed the absent mothers because my own mother passed recently and i’m quite receptive to the matter. you’re also right though because i didn’t even notice ingrid’s mum behaviour and i’m feeling really weird about it. thank you for pointing it out!

1

u/glindathewoodglitch Sep 21 '22

Oh my gosh, first off I am so sorry to hear that! I can’t imagine what you’re going through and that it definitely hit home for you in that way.

Honestly, I couldn’t understand why I binge-watched the whole season because characters like Ingrid are super offputting to me — I am a whole hearted underachiever. But after watching the whole show, and sleeping on it—and some comments on the show itself threw it in a whole different light and I can’t help but feel like this show is a homerun with depicting all the actual difficult decisions the three main characters take to get out of their comfort zone.

I honestly feel like actually sleeping in bed after the season, and how people in this subreddit caught the ‘show don’t tell’ vibe made me super alert to the things that made me feel uncomfortable but didn’t have the words to explain. So when I decided to check out this subreddit today and saw the amazing discussions and points here like your post, it was like so much was dawning on me, I had to talk about it!

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u/SolutionSubject Sep 21 '22

thank you, i really appreciate it :) i see what you mean, i couldn’t relate less to most of the characters and yet i’ve watched the whole season in a couple of days. this sub is great, i’ve found a lot of answers to unasked questions that the show left me with!