Do you know who Becky Ann Baker is? You should. The mom from Girls. The mom from Freaks and Geeks. The mom from Ted Lasso. The mom from lots of other shows never watched, or never even heard of, that got canceled after one season (Katy Keene, for example). The point is, if a protagonist needs a salt-of-the-Earth mom to deliver some tough love or fill out their backstory, then casting directors need look no further than Becky Ann Baker. Baker has successfully raised a generation of TV teens and adults, and by extension, their audience.
A tried and true character actress, Baker always has the ability to bring a little extra something to her mom roles; it’s not hard to imagine her telling you to pick up your socks or come home for the holidays every once in a while with just the smallest sliver of dialogue. (Though much like the rest of her character actor coterie, Baker has also played her fair share of judges.)
In honor of Mother’s Day, we took a look at some of Baker’s more significant mom roles throughout the years and ranked them based on one clear measure of success: How much do we want her to be our mom?
6. Ted Lasso
If I was birthed by the female Ted Lasso, I, too, would need to cross the Atlantic to escape.
Unlike the entry above, Baker plays not the mother to the titular Katy Keene, but rather Mrs. Kelly, the mother of Katy Keene’s boyfriend, loyal himbo, K.O. Kelly. Despite that, Mrs. Kelly has stepped in as a sort of surrogate mother to Katy, who lost her own when she was young. It is a testament to Baker’s acting prowess that she has about 30 seconds of screentime, delivering the classic “She would be so proud of you” speech, and still it’s enough to make you slightly weepy. Sadly, Katy Keene was canceled after only one season, making this Baker’s only appearance. What she would do with a “Your mother would be so disappointed” speech after Katy breaks K.O.’s heart has to be left to our imaginations. (It would sting, though, of that I am sure.)
4. Girls
Hannah Horvaths aren’t just born—they’re made. Only through the specific combination of Tad and Loreen Horvath could there reasonably be the creation of Hannah, a character who has sparked as much discourse as Don Draper, Walter White, and Tony Soprano. Yeah, when you first meet Loreen, she seems like a huge pill, no longer wanting to bankroll Hannah’s pursuit of artistry in the Big City. Loreen certainly does not say or do everything correctly, but she also isn’t wrong, either—not for her refusal to pay Hannah’s bills, not for telling Hannah to walk away from Adam, and not for her feelings of frustration and loneliness at Tad’s later-in-life emergence from the closet. Baker turns in a performance that is raw but magnetic, serving somehow both as inspirational and a cautionary tale. Plus, by the end of the show, when all the girls have mostly gone their separate ways, it is by Hannah’s side where Loreen still remains.
3. Smash
Weirdly this is not the only show on this list that features a scene in its pilot where Baker and her husband visit from the Midwest and tell their daughter she should give up on their hopes and dreams. Certainly the scene in Smash, wherein Karen Cartwright (Katharine McPhee) is confronted by her disbelieving parents (Becky Ann Baker and her real-life husband, Dylan Baker) lacks the intensity and verve that put Girls on the map, it hits similar beats. See: “Be more practical!” and “New York City is expensive!” Baker gets less to do in Smash than she does Girls, but still manages to make a meal of mouthing the words “Marry him” at her daughter, in regards to her hunky British boyfriend. Though Baker only appears once more throughout Smash’s run, she and Mr. Cartwright seem to come around to their daughter’s choices, with the Cartwrights sort of pulling an anti-Horvath and throwing Karen some cash so she can continue to waitress/actress.
Sure, Baker may seem like a generically straight-laced parent here, but if she has the patience to deal with Karen Cartwright, one of the more annoying characters to ever grace our television screen, then imagine how loving of a parent she’d be towards you, someone who doesn’t share distinguishing qualities with Katharine McPhee.
For everyone who didn’t watch The Girls on the Bus—which is, well, everyone—the show tells the fictionalized story of a group of female reporters (the titular girls on the bus) following presidential hopefuls on the campaign trail. At some point, Sadie (Melissa Benoist) is kicked off the campaign trail by her boss/father figure Bruce Turner, played by Griffin Dunne. This show, by the way, is a veritable smorgasbord of character actors. She returns home, tail between her legs, but to who else but her mom, played by who else but Becky Ann Baker. As the only person who watched this show, I can also take that to mean that yes, I was the most excited to see Baker pop up as the mother to our beleaguered heroine. (Baker does also appear for about 30 seconds in the pilot, to lovingly suggest her daughter pursue writing about something other than politics, as a Baker character is wont to do.)
When Sadie is down and also out, it is her mother who reminds her that her writing has always been her salvation and can be again. “You’ll think of something, you always do,” she says. It’s the kind of firm but galvanizing speech every kid needs to hear from a parent sometimes—and peak Baker. You have a little more faith in Sadie—who has made some serious career missteps—because her mom, so capably played by Baker, believes in Sadie.
1. Freaks and Geeks
Did you know our parents are people too? Freaks and Geeks was the first show to teach me this was the case. Yes, other contemporary “teen” shows like Dawson’s Creek and The O.C. featured the parent characters having wants and desires, but they were mostly the want and desire of an extramarital affair with the hot neighbor. Freaks and Geeks showed that a parent could be traditional—read “boring”—and still have a rich inner life. Harold and Jean Weir (portrayed by Joe Flaherty and Baker) were a decoder ring through which we could better understand our own parents, whom it was impossible to imagine were ever young — or God forbid, our age. The best example of this is the 10th episode of the show’s too-short run. Convinced they’ll find something incriminating in their daughter Lindsay’s diary (Linda Cardellini, also doing incredible work, as always), Harold and Jean snoop through her room while she’s at school. What they find instead is a condemnation of their “small” lives. Jean is horrified and sets out to prove to her daughter she’s not as provincial as she thinks.
It’s not just that Jean cares about her daughter, it’s that she cares about what her daughter thinks of her, a level of sensitivity not often afforded to TV parents. Baker imbues Jean with so much spirit and humanity that it’s impossible not to be reminded of your own (likely) well-meaning parents. Even one look from Baker is so fraught with all of her expectations for Lindsay, you can easily understand why Lindsay would constantly feel a tug between her need for independence versus her fear of letting her parents down.
The cancellation of Freaks and Geeks robbed us of so many things, and chief among them is more stellar work by Baker, in a part that feels tailor-made for her.
Honorable Mention:
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam finds Baker branching out, playing not only a grieving mom…but record scratch….a grandmother as well, as is to be expected in the natural progression of space, time, and character acting.
Lana Schwartz is a writer born and raised in New York City, where she continues to live today. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The Onion, Shondaland, Slate,and more. Her first book, Build Your Own Romantic Comedy: Pick Your Plot, Meet Your Man, and Direct Your Happily Ever After, was named one of Vulture’s Best Comedy Books of the Year in 2020. Her second bookSet Pieceis out now.
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