Apple TV
It’s unlikely that Walt Disney Animation meant to do this, but attentive viewers have noted that many of the studio’s high-profile feature films feature dead parents as a plot point. Looking over Disney’s output since the beginning, one can find a mass grave of mothers and fathers, some of them dead before the start of the movie (“Cinderella,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” pretty much all the Princess movies), while some of them are killed in action (“Bambi”). It’s unlikely the studio wanted to include dead parents as some kind of commentary on broken homes or whatever, but that was the way things shook out. Ditto superhero characters. Spider-Man, Batman, and Superman are all characters whose parents are dead.
A similar pattern has seemingly emerged, as Reddit users have noticed, in the recent hit shows on Apple TV. Only with Apple, instead of dead parents, it’s dead spouses. One user referred to the network as the Apple Widowers Universe, noting how often the phenomenon happens. In at least three cases, Apple TV shows feature a wife who was killed in a drunk-driving accident and a widower protagonist who is intensely mourning their loss to the point of extreme depression.
In some of Apple TV’s shows, the widows/widowers are merely single members of the ensemble. For example, the character of Patrick Kennedy on the post-apocalypse series “Silo,” played by Rick Gomez, has a dead wife. In most cases, though, the widow/widower is front and center. One might immediately think of Jimmy Laird, the psychiatrist character played by Jason Segel on Apple’s “Shrinking.” That show’s action is predicated on Jimmy losing his wife and on how he deals with his subsequent intense mourning. She was killed in a drunk-driving accident.
And that’s just the start of it.
Apple TV is the home of depressed widowers
Apple TV
Indeed, in some of these cases, the extreme depression over a dead spouse is the direct impetus for a show’s drama. One might also immediately think of Mark Scout, the depressed office wonk at the center of Apple’s “Severance.” Mark is so saddened by the drunk-driving death of his wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) that he has volunteered for an eerie sci-fi experiment at the Lumon corporation. They can “mute” all his memories of the outside world when he goes to work in the morning. At night, when he leaves, his memories are restored, and all of his time at the office is now blanked out. Why does Mark want to do this? Because it means he won’t be thinking about Gemma for 8 hours a day.
Of course, “Severance” is a mysterious and twisty show, and it is eventually revealed that Gemma may be alive, so we can argue whether “Severance” counts as a “sad widower” show. I think it ought to.
“Pluribus” definitely counts, as audiences actually got to watch the main character lose her wife in the pilot episode. Rhea Seehorn plays a writer named Carol who experiences a massive global cataclysm wherein all humans suddenly become psychically linked into a hive mind. While the linking is going on, Carol’s wife Helen (Miriam Shor) begins convulsing and dies in the hospital shortly thereafter. Carol, a sad alcoholic, has to deal with Helen’s death at the same time that she fights off a new wave of friendly, united humanity. She was left unlinked for reasons unknown. Carol is a sad and angry character, a widow to join Apple’s army.
So many dead spouses on Apple TV!
Apple TV
And if it wasn’t obvious that the network was interested in widows and widowers, Apple TV even has a TV series called “Widow’s Bay.” The main character is the titular town’s mayor, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), who, true to the show, lost his wife, Lauren (Meredith Casey). And yes, he is quite depressed about it.
Some fans on Reddit also pointed out that Apple’s show “Your Friends & Neighbors” (a favorite of Stephen King) features a character played by James Marsden who is also a widower. Although he is not one of the lead characters, and his wife’s death is not a major event in the central action of the series. Indeed, he doesn’t even show up until the show’s second season. It is odd, though, that the makers of the show thought they would throw in yet another widower. For tradition’s sake, it seems.
Also, in Apple’s adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation,” Jared Harris plays the mathematician Hari Seldon, and, wouldn’t you know it, his wife, Yanna (Nimrat Kaur), is deceased. She was not killed in a drunk-driving accident, but was murdered by … look, I had better not get into “Foundation” here. It’s way too complicated.
It’s easy to see why TV writers so often fall back on the trope of a dead spouse, though. It’s easy, writerly shorthand for depression. In many stories throughout human history, a protagonist begins their tale in a bad place, one they long to escape. Being saddened over a recent death is a handy-dandy way to create that. And then, through that sadness, they are motivated to create an escape or undergo an extreme change in their lives.
And Apple TV has done it at least seven times, possibly more.
