Did you ever try to protect someone so much that it hurt?

My So-Called Life – Other People’s Mothers
Angela finds Rayanne’s mother enchanting during her first visit to their house, but it is Patty who can be counted on to get Rayanne to the hospital when she overdoses at a party. The above picture is from the booklet; it's not that I really love blue checked backgrounds.

Angela, Rickie, and Rayanne are hanging out at Angela’s house, and Rayanne grabs a beer. Rickie is carrying it for her when Patty comes home, and she is overtly judgmental about it (understandably).

The next day, the three friends go to Rayanne’s house, where Angela meets Rayanne's mother Amber for the first time. Amber is a tarot-reading free spirit, and Angela starts to parrot everything she says. We see that Amber and Rayanne both drink a lot, together, and have a relatively nontraditional mother-daughter relationship in that they more like buddies. Angela’s mom comes to pick her up and Patty can’t even pretend to be civil; she looks around the house like she’s in a rat-infested crack den. To be fair, Amber is super touchy-feely and instantly brings up the fact that Patty is adopted (which Angela has told her).

Meanwhile, Patty’s mother is in town for her anniversary party even though her husband is in the hospital. She certainly gives more insight into why Patty is the way she is – just as her father is super judgmental, her mother is super manipulative and undermines her at every turn.

Rayanne has a party and gets wasted on alcohol and ecstasy, and when Amber come home she kicks everyone out and then goes out for a night on the town, ignoring the fact that her daughter is practically swallowing her own tongue. Angela phones Patty, who has this mother’s intuition thing when the phone rings, and when Angela calls her “Mommy” she knows something is really wrong. Patty is calm and takes control of the whole situation, getting Rayanne to the hospital and even managing to find some of the drugs she’s taken to give to the paramedics. And, shockingly, she doesn’t yell or get self-righteous about the whole situation. She does, however, realize that Rickie was not the one drinking that day in their house, and that Rickie truly tries to protect Rayanne from herself.

In this ep we learn that Patty once had a friend like Rayanne once , and the same thing happened to her ... only she died. When Amber finally makes it to the hospital, she goes into histrionics over her sleeping daughter's body and Angela realizes maybe her mom ain’t so bad after all.