My entire point was that she was not viewing him as a full adult. She's acting as a mother, yes; a mother to a kid. She's supposed to be a mother to an adult, which is how we're expecting her to act.
Maybe it's just the mothers that I know, but this sort of thing really isn't all that uncommon, so I don't find that her acting that way is out of the ordinary (my friends are all mostly in their late 20s to early 30s, by the way... some of them with children of their own!). Some mothers just never quite get past that "mothering instinct", and more often than not, times of trouble like this bring that out even more.
We don't really know how Marten responds to bad breakups (the only other one we know about for sure is Vicki, whom he followed to Massachusetts for, and we never saw how he really dealt with that). Mrs. Reed, however, might, and if her experience is that Marten tends to descend into a funk, then this may be part of her way of trying to snap him out of it. Of course, since they don't really interact regularly anymore, she may be off base as to how to get him to "move on", but it's hard to say. She may actually be trying something that's worked previously on him.
Evidence for such a theory must be provided. Without evidence, it's mere conjecture. It's possible that this is her way of snapping him out of it, and it may have worked before. However there nothing to suggest this is the case.
As evidence against it, Ms. Reed wished to help Dora, and helped her superbly, demonstrating that she has the ability to comfort people in an effective manner. We have seen little of that behaviour directed at Marten though.
As further reason for why the 'Ms. Reed works in mysterious ways' theory is invalid, look at Marten's reaction so far. It doesn't appear to be helping, and so far, Marten's reaction to Ms. Reed has been far from positive. That doesn't strike me as successful, and if Ms. Reed really were as devious as the theory suggests, she should be able to see that.
As stated, the problem is that we don't know how Marten responds, so your conjecture that sympathy directed at Marten would work better than the current approach is just as much mere conjecture as mine. Certainly, her current approach does not seem to be working at present, but that does not mean that showing him sympathy and just being there for him would work better. Hannelore at least partially tried that approach, and there did not seem to be much improvement (admittedly, it was only for a short time). My point is really that we have no evidence... for either side.
She comforts Dora in the "conventional" way because she doesn't know what would work for her, and thus uses that method, but perhaps she knows that doesn't work on her son, and thus is going for the "tough love" approach. This brings up a possibly interesting point, however. How similar is Marten to his father, and how much of Mrs. Reed's reaction may be some subconscious reaction to things that would work on him? After all, there is that story about him in #441 (linked below).
Edit - I totally typed this up before I read Dr. ROFLPWN's post. No, really!
As well, again it may just be my circles, but I've often seen that parents can be much harder towards family than towards "strangers". They'll bend over backwards for people that are "merely" friends or acquaintances, but family just has to "suck it up". It probably has something to do with how they feel that others, outside the family should perceive them, but family, being, well, family doesn't "deserve" the nice impressions. This may be more of a foreign as opposed to American thing, though.
Expansion - While it's completely understandable that people empathize with Marten and would like the current constant stream of abuse to stop and see him get the coddling that many feel he wants and "deserves", it is not clear that this would be what would be "best" for him. After all, this may all be intended as a "growth through adversity" plan of Jeph's that will end up giving us a stronger, better, more mature Marten in the future. That, however, is pure speculation on many, many, levels.
Mrs. Reed may just have a problem of blurting out the first thing that comes to mind without completely thinking about it. This will be repeated below (when talking to Sven).
Any evidence to back up such a claim, perhaps from the first time she appeared?
Touching raw nerves by openly flirting with Marten's ex's brother. Judging from his reaction here, going off to sleep is Marten's way of dealing with the stress from his mother.
Again, as stated above, possibly just a case of speaking without thinking. Doesn't negate the damage done, of course, but it might explain why it comes out that way.
As a professional dominatrix, she should have better control of her tongue than to blurt stuff out without thinking. Also, no evidence for her blurting out without thinking has been provided.
#433 - Her first time talking to Faye is remarkably like her first time talking to Hannelore, allowing for the fact that Hannelore has more obvious issues than Faye. Remember that this was before "The Talk", so all we really knew that was "wrong" about Faye was her habit of using Marten as a punching bag. Also consider how she casually mentions how Marten doesn't like to talk about the divorce not only because of the divorce, but because his father had just come out of the closet. To me, this wouldn't be the sort of thing you casually mention to someone you've only just met. Marten passes it off as not being much of a surprise.
#434 - Second to last and last panels; Mrs. Reed is setup as dating guys half her age (Hi, Sven!), and providing information that embarasses Marty. Even Faye mentions that it's a cold reaction. Seems like even more setup for what we have going on now. Of course, at the time, Marten was in a better place (emotionally), so it all pretty much just got passed off as "oh, that darn mother of mine".
#435 - Last panel again, merrily carrying on about her own thing and embarassing Marten further.
#441 - Ribald story about herself and Marten's father, which she alternately claims is true, then not, then is. I think this one might actually be worse than her showing off his baby pictures. On that note, perhaps this is related to your professional dominatrix thing; since she's with her son, she feels she can "relax" and be off the job, which loosens her tongue a bit more than might be considered proper.
#460 - Last panel, again with the TMI for Marten, as well as the added punch of Faye's comment.
#1822 - This visit, but see how she blurts out the same statement as Dora did upon meeting Tai. Now, when this was last discussed, it was more about how it was the same statement as Dora's, but it's still another example of her blurting things out without necessarily thinking about it.
I'm not sure that Marten objects to the baby pictures per se, so much as the one specific one. And I don't think that she pulled out the baby pictures just for that single one. I think she's just proud of her boy, and wants to show off how "cute" he was when he was young to his friends. In her mind, she thinks that this will help show them what a wonderful boy he is. This is, again, what seems to be a fairly common parental attitude.
She waited until he left. This proves that she knew he would disapprove of her actions, yet she took them anyway. Even if Marten only objects to that one, she should have removed it, and confidently brought the album out in front of him, instead of furtively going behind his back. The mere fact that she waits for him to leave is proof that she knows he disapproves, and isn't just socially inept.
As someone else has mentioned, this is still a common parental phenomenon. It's a case of where parental pride in what they've created outweighs (for them) any possible embarassment inflicted on their offspring. In fact, often in their view, it's more of a "look how cute my little snookum wookums is/was," and in their minds it should only enhance said offspring's standing amongst their friends. Said offspring, of course, naturally often have different ideas. It's just part of the dichotomy between parental and children's views.
You mean there is a reason for her to sneak out in the middle of the dinner? I have nothing against her comforting Dora, but if her goal was to keep the peace, then she should have picked a significantly better moment. i.e. One when she wasn't hanging out with him.
This may have been the only time she thought she could find Dora. After all, she doesn't know where Sven lives, and it's not exactly a question she could ask Marten. For that matter, she may not even know that Dora is currently living with Sven. The point being that as far as we know that Mrs. Reed knows, the only place she would be able to find Dora would be at CoD, and she just took the first opportunity she had to go there, even though it ended up being during a time when she was with Marten.
And for the record, I do not necessarily agree with what Mrs. Reed has been doing. I do feel that I should point out how things might seem from her end, and that we can then all draw our own conclusions, as people generally do. The point being that while what Mrs. Reed is doing may be "wrong", she's not doing them arbitrarily, but is doing them for reasons that, to her, seem valid.
Of course. I doubt she views herself as the villain. She's the kindly, supportive mother who flew out to comfort her son on short notice after his harsh breakup. We, as the audience, can see that she's either malicious or just plain stupid. All her actions are bringing Marten pain, and as a mother, she should pick up on that. Whatever way you look at it, you either have to be malicious towards your son, or an idiot to ditch him in the middle of dinner to comfort his ex. She may feel justified, but she's not considering Marten's feelings in the slightest. (Or if she is, she's malicious.)
I don't agree that we can see "that she's either malicious or just plain stupid." She doesn't see things the same as he does, and she may be wrong, but this doesn't necessarily make her malicious or stupid. If she had been truly malicious, she would have told him flat out, "Now that we're here, I'm going to pop over and comfort Dora, because you don't deserve it, you whiny little bitch." Instead, she tried to spare his feelings by trying to cover up what she was doing. Now, I don't disagree that it might not have been the best time for her to do it, but, as stated above, she may have thought that she wouldn't get any better chance to do so, and perhaps she did it in order to hopefully gain some more insight into the situation so she could maybe adjust her tactics. If this was the case, it did apparently fail, although we don't know if she and Dora talked anymore after the strip we saw. Still, just because 2 people disagree on things, or do things differently, does not make one or the other "malicious or stupid." There is a lot of room in this world for genuine disagreement on how things ought to be handled, and there is usually no one right answer.
Poll
4 (3.1%)
Author
Topic: WCDT January 3-7, 2011 (1831-1835) (Read 106733 times)