I have been doing a lot of looking back recently. Some how the show Long Story Short by the creator of BoJack Horseman has been hitting me very hard. This will have spoilers about the show.

There is a scene in the show where the whole family is called together for an intervention for a character who doesn’t need it. The whole thing was orchestrated by the mother of the family to get her three children and their families to visit during their anniversary. As the characters slowly figure out that it is not an intervention for their younger brother, it is more about their mother wanting just that attention from their children. The when the younger brother reveals that his “suspicious” activities was because of him converting to Orthodox Judaism, which the mother belittled her son’s choice and still attempted to force him to break his beliefs to appease her.

That was something I saw a lot of my own childhood in. My mother was very narcissistic and constantly would do things like that. Once for her own amusement, when it was pouring rain during Easter she told me that she hid Easter eggs outside. This was when I was around nine or ten, so of course I believed her especially due to her constantly telling me the importance of being honest. She was lying. I spent a solid amount of time in the pouring rain outside looking around for Easter eggs to no avail. When I came back inside she of course laughed at me, then later in the day thought it would be so funny to the story more just to humiliate me. Well it turned out that even so many years later she still tells that story just because she finds it so funny that she humiliated her child.

The episode of the show ends with the oldest child chastising his mother for the whole ordeal and her feeling it is needed to lie to her children about an intervention just so they would see him. Of course, he goes to apologize later and while attempting to apologize and talk about his needs, his mother chastises and makes fun of his choices. The episode ended with the oldest child telling his mom “I want to have a better relationship with you, but something needs to change”. That entire ending felt like a sack of bricks to me.