Happy’s Place welcomed a long-talked-about character to the titular barroom as Jane Lynch made her debut as Gabby’s (Melissa Peterman) mom, Valerie, a.k.a. Val, in the episode, “A New Chapter.”
While Gabby is eager to put her journey towards motherhood behind her, she gets sucked back in with the arrival of Val, who quickly begins to win over her colleagues, like Isabella (Belissa Escobedo), Steve (Pablo Castelblanco), and even the prickly Emmett (Rex Linn). But Bobbie (Reba McEntire) is reasonably cautious, despite being the reason that Val shows up to begin with.
As Gabby and Bobbie piece it together, her response to a condolence card extended an invitation to Val, not knowing she’d take her up on the offer. Gabby is distraught, but also desperate as she attempts to win over her unwinnable mother. “Val has been referred to as Gabby’s horrible mother, and so, I was really thrilled to play this kind of person who has two faces and they’re completely diametrically opposed in a way,” Lynch tells TV Insider.
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“There’s no conflict within her about them, zero conflict. She love bombs people. She’s charming. She looks people in the eye, so, everyone in the bar is like, ‘Gabby, your mother is wonderful,'” Lynch says. “They drink the Kool-Aid, and then, of course, Gabby is still coming to this dry well trying to get water, and it will never work, and she hasn’t learned her lesson yet.”
As she continues to not learn her lesson, Gabby attempts to win her mother over by telling her she is trying for a baby, even though she can’t have one. Ultimately, she’s forced to fess up, and viewers learn the real reason that Val has blown into town as she and Gabby’s father have gotten fully divorced.
“Yeah, and without a thought of like, this might devastate her daughter. It doesn’t matter,” Lynch notes of Val’s blunt and sneaky delivery of the bombshell. “She didn’t tell her before because it served her on some level to think that they were still together,” she adds. “And perhaps, Val doesn’t like the idea that somebody left her, that someone finally said enough. So the husband’s gone, and a narcissist needs their fuel. Who can she go to, who’s been a really steady source of fuel? Gabby. So, that’s the reason she comes into her life.”
By the end of the episode, it seems like the women are going to attempt to make their mother-daughter relationship work, making us wonder what could possibly be next as Val appears to be sticking around.
“Gabby keeps going to this dry well, and she’s gonna go one more time, and she’s decided she’s gonna give it her everything, and it’s such a misplaced commitment,” Lynch teases. Instead, she thinks Gabby should shift her focus to bar owner Bobbie. “Let Bobbie be her maternal figure in life. She sees what’s going on, but she’s kind of got to let Gabby make her mistakes. And so, we’re gonna have one last hurrah…”
Don’t miss it for yourself, continue to watch Happy’s Place for Lynch’s return as Val, and let us know what you thought about her arrival in the comments section below.
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