The Conners Review: A Cold Mom, a Brother Daddy and a Prison Baby (Season 3 Episode 7)

The choice to add a guest star to the lineup can either make or break an episode. In the case of The Conners Season 3 Episode 7, “A Cold Mom, a Brother Daddy and a Prison Baby,” Candace Bergen makes the episode bearable. 

Without her comedic timing and presence, the story simply flops. The choice to bring up Ben’s dead unknown father may be the set up for further exploration later on but in the run of this episode isn’t all that interesting.

Honestly, if someone else had been chosen to play Ben’s mother this episode would probably fail to stick in my head at all. Candace Bergen makes the mother more compelling than her words ever could. 

As Jackie points out, she is eerily similar to Bev — which one of her is enough, thank you. However, her sparring off with Darlene about things they’ve done makes her more fascinating and fun than Bev could ever be. 

A large part of that is due to Bergen’s line delivery and body language. Simply put, she has perfect onscreen chemistry with Sara Gilbert. 

Oddly enough, Ben doesn’t even seem to land any of the emotions of the moment correctly. It’s less conflicted and more disingenuous — we aren’t given any indication we should believe his feelings.

Lackluster writing and shallow character evaluation can definitely be to blame in this situation. There is more time spent on his mother and less on Ben’s actual process and grief. 

Let’s just hope that Ben’s father bombshell is here to stay — the follow-through on this is very important to the development of Ben as a character. It’s about time Ben gets a bit more character depth, to bad this episode missed the mark on introducing it.

Learning more about Ben is never a bad thing. If Season 2 teaches us anything, it’s that newly discovered, or recently reacquainted, family members, make for excellent plot devices.

The Conners always has at least one episode that is more filler than fun and unfortunately, this happens to be one of them. Becky and Emilio can usually capture our attention with their little back and forth, but this episode proves sometimes it’s just not there. 

It’s easy to understand why Becky is hesitant to trust the possibility of a relationship with Emilio considering their past. However, this time things are completely different — they are married for one, but also Becky is sober and they share a child. 

Becky is taking a step in the right direction by spending more time with Emilio and talking to him about her relationship woes. She is going to get there eventually, but the trust just isn’t completely there.

This episode needs a bit of forward progression, which seems to be coming from Becky and Emilio at first only to see it stagnate and fizzle. This could be forgivable if only their moments are cute and funny — which they aren’t.

Harris even deserves more time in the spotlight this episode — as hard as it is for me to admit that. We miss out because the reveal of her disastrous cake is done so off-screen.

Harris is the queen of fantastic facial expressions and one-liners. This episode is in need of her more sarcastic wit — too bad we don’t get it.

The Conners makes a huge mistake by misusing Harris and Ben. It creates an unfinished feel on every moment and leaves us lost in the woods, confused.

What did you think of this episode of The Conners? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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The Conners airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on ABC.

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