Cricket Meets The Harrison Kids, And Speaks For Us All

We might not be ready for it, but it's happened: Megan Mullally is playing moms to adult sitcom characters. She's actually been doing it for a while: she voiced Barney's mom in a 2006 How I Met Your Mother, before the show let us see Barney's mom's whole body and cast Frances Conroy to play her, and judging by the moms she's played since, the original casting probably made more sense. Barney's mother, Loretta, is a former libertine with a checkered romantic past, just like Mullally's live-action sitcom moms of late: the multiply-married Dana Hartz of Happy Endings, and now Trophy Wife's Cricket, mother to the titular Kate, who's introduced to us moments after she's been detained for molesting a hot male flight attendant on her trip to Los Angeles for Kate's wedding. Dana's love of a succession of men is of a piece with her identity as a New Age-y free spirit, while Cricket's seems just to be that she's lascivious and undiscriminating, but they're two pretty close-together points on a sex-positive spectrum. (We don't see either of them getting up to any high jinks as horny as those Mullally has enjoyed in her various appearances as Tammy Two on Parks & Recreation, but maybe that's just because Nick Offerman hasn't joined her there. Yet!)

Once Pete manages to bail Cricket out of airport jail for her handsiness, she gets to meet her stepgrandchildren for the first time, and judging by their reactions, it seems safe to guess that they've never encountered anyone quite like Cricket before (not even Bert has, and if Cricket isn't a lot like Jackie's mother, it must be because Jackie is the way she is in reaction to some oppressive authoritarian, or else Jackie's mother is dead). Hillary is shocked to be greeted with an enthusiastic kiss on the lips; Warren is flattered to be complimented on the softness of his apparently still pre-adolescent face; and Bert has no compunction about her observation that he's dressed, in a checked buttondown and chinos, "like an elderly man." The only thing necessary to complete the ensemble, in my opinion, is a canvas bucket hat. "Look at the three of you!" Cricket exclaims, without letting any of them say more than "Oh my" (Hillary), "Thank you!" (Warren), and nothing (Bert). But that's all it takes for her to take their full and accurate measure.

Cricket: you nailed it. Bert is the best, whether he's rocking his own Bert Day party...

...or getting annoyed about being too adorable.

Bert forever! Other two kids, you really need to step it up.