‘Mom’ season 3: Chuck Lorre on moving past Emily Osment shocker
It’s not particularly often that we wrote about CBS’ “Mom” on the site, and sometimes that lack of attention probably does the show a little bit of a disservice for what they are able to consistently do: Tell powerful, emotional stories that are somehow still stuffed with silly humor from time to time. Even in Thursday night’s episode, there was a lot of this said humor … though almost all of that was hard to concentrate on after learning the truth about Jodi. The character (played by Emily Osment) died after having an overdose, which shed some light on the issue of addiction that really is at the core of this show. It’s never shied from that, though it also had not quite explored consequences in this sort of way before.
In previewing how this event will impact some of the stories to follow, executive producer Chuck Lorre told The Hollywood Reporter that it will have devastating and far-reaching impacts on almost everything:
“The episodes that follow this one are impacted deeply. It would have been impossible for these characters to carry on as if nothing happened, as if they hadn’t experienced this terrible loss. The episodes that followed this one, they just dive right into [questions like] out of a loss like this — I don’t want to use the cliche “silver lining” — but what can be taken away from this? In the following episode, there’s a scene in the second act where we deal exactly with that, where Anna’s character articulates her need to find some meaning in this loss and find some way for it to have some usefulness, as opposed to simply a dark, gnawing hole in her soul and that was a challenge. That was a challenge, finding a way to keep the series going beyond this point. That was riskier than the episode itself in some ways.”
We’re sure that there are some comedy fans out there who find this sort of storytelling a little difficult to bear, but at the same exact time we’re glad to see that “Mom” is taking these sort of chances to stand out from the crowd, and also show that there are some things bigger than an easy laugh. Sometimes if you can mix the drama with the occasionally silliness that is life, it is easier to hear the message. Let’s hope that this is true in this case.
Let us know what you thought about the Jodi decision in the comments.