Zelena is one character that comes to mind. She’s at home taking care of her baby.
She is, you’re right but I have two points of criticism about this.
1) We saw very little of this. We saw extremely little of her bonding with her newborn or even trying to be a brand new single mother. She’s literally on her own, without even her sister (Regina, not EQ) to help her, and we saw none of that emotional struggle. A newborn baby is exhausting; you’re tired, you’re cranky, you’re out of your depth. and we barely saw Zelena at all.
2) This first point leads to the second: there’s nothing for Zelena’s narrative except as a mother and because A and E go full throttle on ALL ZE PLOT, motherhood gets cast as something easy, burden free, and like it’s all lollipops and unicorns. It’s sanctification of motherhood (something they are WAY too into on this show, to an uncomfortable degree).
Now, I criticized so let me praise:
Belle and her had a decent conversation I believe because they had the whole baby thing in common.
This kind of conversation is good. It was needed. It links Zelena to others outside of her immediate family (really just Regina) which is absolutely needed since the show is largely pushing the idea of family being more than just your blood relations, they are the community that forms around you.
MORE OF THAT.However, this leads me to the rarity of those moments, like I already pointed out. It makes them more precious but it should be the meat of the show. Again, all ze plot .