Morning (US Eastern time).
Bianca: I can’t believe I never realized Patrick’s last Master was Stu Cohen!
Bianca (phone): Ca– uh, Timothy! Did you know the identity of Patrick’s last Master?
Timothy: Well, sure. We fought that version of Patrick a few times for Cohen’s experiments. Why?
Sparrow: So it turns out, if you google “Miranda Lake”, there’s a couple articles about the scandal of Stu Cohen having an illegitimate kid.
Bianca: I could have found this online?
Sparrow: Not only that, if you google “Being Patrick dog”, it takes you to all these articles about Cohen’s research . . .
Bianca: You know what? I can’t listen to this now. I need to get to work!
Librarian: After your desk shift, I need you to pull books for the September display, and then photocopy another set of calendars for the . . .
Bianca: Uh-huh, uh-huh . . .
Bianca (thinking): What if Cohen already knows where we are? He’s some kind of Being expert! He’s probably clever and perceptive about Beings in ways we can only dream of!
One of the Cohen residences.
Cohen: Honey, if you’re not busy this afternoon, I thought we could — Are you going somewhere?
Miranda: Out.
Cohen: Out . . . ? Are you going to be with that Poe guy?
Miranda: Maybe.
Cohen: When am I going to meet this boyfriend of yours, huh?
(SLAM)
…Okay, I’ve held a lot in about Cohen, but I’m going to let it out. If you’re offended by what I’m about to say, too bad, we’ll sort it out later.
He’s a coward. He’s a skulking, slinking, coward. He hides behind all that money, that power, and he can’t even get his own daughter to introduce him to the boyfriend. Cultural relativity be damned, he’s a coward because he couldn’t even be a father, he can’t even take the responsibility of being involved in the life of a child he fathered, and now he’s shocked that she pushes him away! Honestly, I tried to look past some of his crap to see if there was any silver lining to this bastard, and you know what? I can’t anymore. This scene above broke me, and you know why? A father stops his daughter for at least a few seconds to make sure where she’s going and even when she’s going to be home. Cohen isn’t even a man by this point, he’s a waste.
Hopefully I’m not the only one thinking this.
In this case, she’s not introducing him to “the boyfriend” because that’s apparently either her cover story for Poe or an assumption Cohen made because Poe is a male-type person that Miranda goes out to see often. (And with all the forms Beings can take, I imagine even an involved parent would be hard-pressed to figure THAT one out). She likely doesn’t tell him about Poe being a Being or risk a face-to-face meeting because of the way he treated Patrick in pursuit of research, and according to her cast entry, the reason she avoids contact with Cohen is because of said treatment.
What he did to his former Being aside, Cohen’s no shining example of parenthood – and I’m not arguing that he is – but Miranda is ALSO past the age of majority and where she’s going/when she’s going to be home is none of his business anyway because she is legally a grown-ass woman.
(And to say he “can’t even get his own daughter to introduce him to the boyfriend” bothers me in way I can’t really put into words. Like it’s edging on “a REAL MAN should MAKE his daughter _____ ” kind of thinking, which is just ugh.)
“(And to say he “can’t even get his own daughter to introduce him to the boyfriend” bothers me in way I can’t really put into words. Like it’s edging on “a REAL MAN should MAKE his daughter _____ ” kind of thinking, which is just ugh.)”
Yeah, I am also super uncomfortable with that logic.
She’s an adult. Cohen has no power over her. She may be living off of his ginormous wealth, but that’s probably his way of atoning for his absences in previous years – it doesn’t give him any rights over where she’s going or what she’s doing.
It may be years too late, but the man is trying. Would you rather he not be? If he asserted himself like that logic insists a ‘man’ should, he’d only drive her further away. As someone who grew up with a tyrannically authoritarian parent, I can tell you that is NOT how you win back a child’s love and respect.
I’m not saying he’s an excellent father or a good person, but damning him because he fails to be assertive and decisive in a situation that calls for more emotional nuance than that and on top of it doing it in problematically gendered language…not okay either.
I’m not trying to defend Cohen, but this is one of the few times he’s been shown that I’m not actually disagreeing with his actions. How is he supposed to force a meeting between him and Poe? Physically grab Miranda to stop her going out the door? Go snooping on her phone? As was already pointed out, Miranda is an adult, not a 13-year-old whose parents need to make sure she’s not putting herself in danger. And she’s obviously dodging him for all SORTS of reasons, not the least of which is if she were to introduce her Being to one of the top Being experts, he just might catch on.
Rather than “he’s a coward for not forcing a confrontation between himself and his adult daughter,” I read this as “he’s trying, but it’s too little, too late.”
There isn’t a parent alive who could get her to reveal her ‘boyfriend’ through legitimate means, because she’s intently trying to hide that that boyfriend is a being. He could be more perceptive perhaps, but she probably isn’t giving him much… not enough to overcome the small prior probability that this boyfriend is actually a Being.
There are tons of things wrong with Cohen, but this scene isn’t one of them.
Normally, I’d agree with you guys when I might have said something wrong, or didn’t realize what I was saying, like with Miranda and how I didn’t realize my language was giving the wrong idea.
This is not one of those times.
So instead of going on a long tangent, I’ll say this. A PARENT isn’t afraid to confront when they want to make sure their child is safe, even if the kid hates you for it. Emotional nuance can throw itself in front of a train in that situation; She might be legally an adult, but I’ll believe she actually is one when I see her earning her own money and not living in daddy’s penthouse; Rich boy Cohen couldn’t become a father when men all over the world have had to give up their dreams to raise a family, men that I know. He is a coward. He is an idiot. And the biggest thing for me, above all that, is that he is a bad parent who can’t take responsibility.
SOMEbody has some daddy issues…
All kidding aside, he’s trying now, and that’s a hell of a lot better than not caring at all. What do you want Cohen to do? Physically GRAB Miranda and MAKE her introduce him to Poe? Miranda’s a stubborn, independent young woman and Cohen’s complete out of his element here. Yes, he’s an idiot, yes he’s an asshole, and yes, he’s not a very good parent, but this is one of the few times he IS trying, to the best of his limited ability. That’s the point every here’s trying to make, that this is one of the few depicted incidents where he’s at least trying with Miranda.
Safety? He has no indication that she’s being threatened at all. The only thing she’s doing, that he knows of, is dating someone outside of his knowledge. She has reliably come back safe and sound, from what we know, when she’s gone out, she’s shown no evidence (to his eyes) of substance abuse or anything like that. She’s an adult. She has the right to go where she pleases. And she has, quite understandably, cut him out of her personal life because from her POV, he treated it like it wasn’t his business what she did when she was a kid, why is it suddenly his business now? How is “making sure your child is safe” even a thing in this context?
your argument holds no water. It is, until he has some evidence that she’s in any kind of danger (which he does not), absolutely none of his business anymore. He’s making a decent attempt, in this page of the comic, to be involved in her life, but that is ALL he has the right to do, and she is justified in shutting him out. As long as she’s not bringing trouble home with her or displaying any signs of being harmed by what she’s doing, where she goes and what she does is None. Of. His. Business.
And again, some of the issue we’re having with your response is the gendered language – about how he has to be a ‘Father’ and a ‘Man’, and this notion that he should aggressively interfere in his kid’s life. It creates a vibe harkening back to the idea that men own their daughters and thus need to be responsible for their every move and choice, and that if this were a Mom, or son instead of a daughter, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
*Blink, blink* You guys didn’t even Google Miranda? After how she introduced herself as having megalomaniac tendencies? You didn’t even change the search string from “Beings” to “Being that is a dog”? *headdesk*
So much for that theory that theirs is a digital generation, and they think of this stuff intuitively.
There is no doubt that Cohen is not a nice man and has a lot of issues and problems and flaws, but I’m not sure we should be interpreting this as HIS FAULT (re: Miranda/Poe).
1) While Miranda is his daughter, it’s been made very clear that their relationship is extremely tenuous, and they only met well after Miranda was of an age to form opinions and decisions of her own. Not legal age of majority, no, but not a baby or toddler, either. That relationship has been largely negative, and while I believe (from what has been shown and not shown alike) there is a lot more which our Kindly Artist ™ is waiting for the appropriate time to reveal, there is a lot of bitterness on Miranda’s part. Her default instinct is not to do what daddy wants.
2) Even if their relationship were sunlight and roses, he has no right to DEMAND introductions – and, in fact, he reasonably isn’t doing so. In a healthy relationship, even a healthy parent/child relationship where the child has reached adulthood, there should be some courtesy and respect on both sides. He could, for instance, tell her (if she were willing to listen, which right now he’s not getting the chance to do this due to her disinclination to listen) ‘I’m concerned because you’ve been dating this guy for a while and while you have a right to your own private life, if this person is becoming important to you, I’d like to meet him’. He has no parental right to DEMAND to pass judgment without some concrete reason, such as justifiable concern for her physical or mental wellbeing, or legalities. She’s not as far as we know coming home drunk, items of value are not going missing as far as we know from his home, etc. Her behavior does not appear based on available evidence to have changed dramatically, to make Cohen think that Poe is defacto a ‘bad influence’, leading Miranda into a life of crime or whatever. These would be understandable parental concerns, even for as poor a parent as Cohen has been shown to be.
3) Miranda has very good reasons to keep Poe away from Cohen. Even if she does not think that he would by default try to repeat past experiments such as he’s performed on Patrick, she has made it clear in past scenes she does not want Cohen to know that she has a Being at all. The reasons for that have not yet fully been revealed, but that isn’t relevant; as such it’s likely she’s been doing due diligence to make SURE that Cohen has no ‘extra’ reason to want to meet Poe other than that it’s a name regularly associated with her social and/or romantic life. We’ve seen she’s quite capable of consistent deceit and manipulation, and Cohen, at least, doesn’t seem to realize nearly so well as Poe and Patrick of what she is capable.
4) Less than a gender issue (dad and daughter vs mom and daughter or dad and son) I must take issue with framing this as Cohen having greater rights than Miranda in this. In my opinion, the gender is touchy because of it being male vs female (as far as I’m aware of their identification), but ultimately it is about who has authority and ownership of personal/private space. Miranda, as a legal adult, has a RIGHT to a private life, and has absolutely no automatic compulsion to tell anyone else everything about it, up to and including sexual partnerships. Who she is dating is her business, period, full stop. This would be true no matter Miranda’s gender identity, and no matter Cohen’s gender identity, and no matter their relationship to one another. There are certain codas to this, which (man, I’m getting verbose) I’ll list under lettered headings below:
a) Cohen has a right to set ground rules for underneath his roof, provided those rules are sane; Miranda, as a legal adult, has the right to reject those rules and with them, choose to leave elsewhere. If Cohen is concerned about Miranda’s safety and well-being, he could, for instance, want to meet anyone who is going to be spending the night in his house. That doesn’t even need to rest upon sexual partnership – sleepover? etc? Don’t bring someone into my house without introducing them to me. I could see that as far (others may disagree).
b) Cohen has the right to ASK Miranda, as long as they are living together, questions to gauge whether she is safe and healthy and not being abused. This does not mean he automatically gets to know who she’s dating, sleeping with, sharing a lemon meringue pie with, but I think he has the right to ask general questions to this end. He may have been a crappy parent, but if he is trying to be a better one and form a relationship with his embittered estranged daughter, I think this is something he would do.
c) Miranda has the right not to tell him a gosh-darned thing, and to make her own decisions, and so on and so forth. If they come to an irreconcilable disagreement on those terms, she is at liberty to tell him to take a flying leap – similarly, of course, she’s at liberty to get a job and not take his money.
Ultimately, I think I understand the tangle they’re in. She’s embittered that he wasn’t the father she wanted, and the long list of betrayals she’s perceived includes that instead of passing Patrick on to her when he cast Patrick out, he, well, cast Patrick out. She is in no mind inclined to give him any sympathy or credit for what his state of mind at such a time was, nor is she obligated to do so – and as embittered as she is, she chooses to view his money as the only thing worth taking from him. In the long run, this honestly does her no good, and just keeps her trapped in her spiral of negative emotions and self-destructive choices. But she is not in a place where she can see that – and hey, at least her living circumstances are comfortable. I see both Miranda and Cohen as very flawed people who have made or are making some very messed-up choices. Cohen, I think, is very belatedly trying for a path of redemption. He isn’t very good at it, and he doesn’t really know what he’s doing. But in his current state I’d say he’s probably a better choice, ironically, than Anne. I’m ending this here because I’m rambling too much!!!!
Not rambling too much, you were much more articulate about the things I was hoping to get across than I was, so thank you!
If I were Cohen, I would set up an irrevocable trust fund, with Miranda as the sole beneficiary, in an amount that is more than she could conceivably need, even to live in luxury — say, paying out $30,000/month for life. I’d hand it to her, no strings attached, with a note saying, “I’m sorry I haven’t been the father you deserved. But the last thing I want is to try to buy with money what I didn’t earn with attention and love. This money isn’t an attempt to purchase that parental relationship — it’s to make sure that you are never in a position of needing to pretend to that relationship, either for necessities or for luxuries. Now that this money is yours, and your time and choices are your own — I would really like to spend some time with you and get to know you. Please let me know if and when you’re interested in that.”
Because that’s the only way I can see that they can hope to build a father/daughter relationship that isn’t hopelessly warped by the discrepancy in their resources.