Jean Weir

Jean Weir is the Weir family's mother, a warm, anxious presence trying to keep her household steady as her once-obedient daughter Lindsay starts pulling away toward a rougher crowd and her son Sam navigates the ordinary miseries of high school. She worries, she hovers, she means well, often bewildered by how fast her kids are changing.

Becky Ann Baker plays suburban-mom concern without ever letting it curdle into caricature; you feel her genuine confusion at losing the daughter she thought she knew. The writing gives her small, real moments of stubbornness and humor rather than pure scolding, so she reads as a person parenting badly-timed adolescence, not an obstacle for the plot.