Patty Chase

Patty Chase is Angela's mother, running the family business and the household with the same brisk competence, baffled by the daughter who's suddenly pulling away from her. She wants closeness and honesty and gets neither, and she keeps trying anyway, alternating between control and hurt bewilderment as Angela drifts toward secrecy.

The show could easily have made her a punchline nagging mom, but Bess Armstrong plays Patty's frustration as real grief, not just discipline. She's controlling because she's scared of losing her daughter, and the writing lets her be wrong and sympathetic in the same scene, which is rarer than it sounds.