Jerry D |
10-27-2021 08:03 PM |
Madison Kellner – The Worst Character Ever on Everwood
Hi everyone. Doing this rewatch has allowed me to view Everwood with a different perspective. For example, this time around, I’m much more empathetic toward Amy. When I first saw the show, I really thought that Amy was using Ephram, and that her friendship with him had ulterior motives, and that she basically abandoned her friendship with Ephram when Colin “woke up” and again after Colin died. This time around, I can see that Amy was basically torn between her feelings for Colin and her feelings for Ephram, and in early Season Two, she was so crippled by her situational depression that she could barely function, let alone have time to be in a serious relationship with Ephram. Still though, she might have gotten together with Ephram sooner in Season Two, and he could have helped her cope with her depression, except for one thing that not only affected her, but which set the tone for most of Season Two, she saw Ephram kiss his sister’s babysitter, Madison Kellner. Amy seeing Ephram kissing Madison temporarily derailed her and Ephram uniting romantically, and it set her on a self-destructive course where she dated a drug addict named Tommy and she left her home to live with Edna and Irv.
As bad as that all was, Amy eventually came to her senses and broke up with Tommy and she never saw him again, and she worked through the depression that she suffered after Colin’s death, and her and Ephram got together as a romantic couple at the end of Season Two, to the joy of all of us who loved them and rooted for them as a couple.
One thing that hasn’t changed during my rewatch of the show is my hatred for Madison Kellner and every single scene that she was in, and I really got to see how she negatively affected Ephram, who became, in his words, psychotically obsessed with her, and she did real damage to Ephram’s relationships with everyone around him, especially his father and sister, as his obsession with her became all-encompassing and he neglected his relationships with everyone who loved him and cared for him and he behaved in ways that represented continuing new lows for his character.
Unlike Amy and Tommy’s story and Andy and Linda’s story (which wasn’t a bad story at all, but it was a story that purposely was meant to be of a short duration) and later Andy and Amanda’s story, which had an ending, Ephram and Madison’s “romantic relationship” haunted the series for the rest of its run and we would have been forced to deal with seeing her again at the end of Season Four if Everwood didn’t get cancelled. Madison was, in my opinion, the worst character and idea for a character that we ever saw on Everwood. She was introduced as Delia’s babysitter, but she quickly became romantically involved with Ephram, and their paring was wrong on every level. Madison alternated between looking down on Ephram and acting like she was ashamed to be with him to being in love with him and telling him that her stomach gets all fluttery when he walked into the room, and when he kissed her she just came undone, which really turned my stomach because he was only a kid. Madison knew that being with Ephram was wrong, but she continued to be involved with him, even to the point of having sex with him when she saw how unstable he had become due to his obsession with her. Ephram was so insecure about his relationship with Madison that he acted in ways that were out of character for him and he was quite unlikable when he was with Madison, and I was so glad when they broke up. When I’ve rewatched Season Two this year, I really got to see how dangerously obsessed Ephram was with Madison, and how his character regressed when he was involved with her, and how badly he treated his father, his sister, his friend Bright, and even Amy. Everything about their relationship was illicit and oh so wrong, and I never viewed them as a normal couple, and I don’t understand why the writers took things so far with a teenage boy who wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle such a serious and sexual relationship with an adult woman who was hired to be his sister’s babysitter. Madison also hurt Delia who had to witness all the drama between her babysitter and her brother, until the point when she wisely “fired” Madison because she made Ephram so unhappy.
Unfortunately for Ephram, Madison, and everyone else involved in their story, and most unfortunately for us fans, Madison’s saga didn’t end when her and Ephram broke up, because she revealed to Andy at the end of Season Two that she was pregnant with Ephram’s child, and Andy told her not to tell Ephram and that he’d pay her to basically go away and stay out of Ephram’s life, and so “Madisongate,” as we called it, hung over Season Three like a pall and it tainted the happiness we would have otherwise felt watching Ephram and Amy become a couple and watching Ephram and Andy become closer.
We then saw that Madison revealed to Ephram that she had his baby and gave it up for adoption, signing the papers “Father Unknown” at the worst possible time, right on the eve of his audition for Julliard, which sent him into an emotional tailspin and it ruined his relationship with not only his father, but with poor Amy as well, as he lashed out at her because she knew about Madison’s pregnancy before he did, and we had to endure seeing Ephram break up with Amy and break her heart in a really cruel and unnecessary way and go off to Europe, and even when he returned, him and Amy didn’t get back together because he had hurt her so much, and we only got to see them get back together because Everwood was canceled.
As we saw in the alternate ending to Everwood, we wouldn’t have been done with Madison yet, and instead of being able to see Ephram and Amy reunite in that beautiful Ferris Wheel scene, we would have gotten to see poor Amy standing out by that Ferris Wheel by herself, while Ephram went back into his apartment to call Madison, which would have infuriated everyone, and it would have delayed, or possibly ended, Ephram and Amy’s reunion, and for what? Why bring back a character that everyone hated and rehash the baby storyline that had gotten closure in Season Three?
What aggravates me the most about Madison is how we were never allowed to be done with her and her story because of her pregnancy. A lot of people didn’t like Amy and Tommy or Andy and Linda, and they especially didn’t like Andy and Amanda, but at least those storylines were allowed to end and they were never to be mentioned again, but Madison kept on turning up like a bad penny and she loomed over the happiness of all the major characters like a black cloud, and she did damage to the show itself by making her storyline a soap opera.
Therefore, I have to conclude that Madison did more damage to the main characters on Everwood and the show itself than any other character or storyline.
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