‘Lost in Space’ Gives Us Parents That Aren’t Perfect, and That’s Why They’re Great

TV parents tend to play to the extremes. They’re supposed to have all the answers, like those sitcom moms and dads who have memorized Parenting for Dummies. Or they’re a frayed nerve, raw and hyper-reactive (see: Winona Ryder in Stranger Things). When I first launched into Netflix’s Lost in Space reboot, I instinctively expected parents Maureen (Molly Parker) and John Robinson (Toby Stephens) to be one or the other, either separately or together. They could have easily been like the Maureen and John from the original 1965 series, two perfect parents comfortably situated in antiquated gender roles. Or they could have been dramatic hot messes, befitting of a show aiming to modernize a campy sci-fi classic.

Instead, the new Lost in Space walks a third path between those two polar opposite routes. Lost in Space presents the parents as professionally capable but in over their heads, and possessing mundane parenting flaws (there are no hysterical crying fits to be seen). The new Maureen and John exist in a gray area where they aren’t perfect parents and are therefore great TV parents.

This is all apparent in the first episode, from the moment the Robinsons survive their crash landing in an alien ice cave. Oh, and spoilers ahead for the first episode of Lost in Space, obviously.

After exiting the submerged Jupiter 2, the kids notice what looks like an explosion way off in the distance. The kids ask if it’s another crashed ship and, instead of giving them a straightforward answer, Maureen takes the opportunity to teach them a lesson! “You’re disappointing me,” she says with a smile, overlooking the fact that their lives are in danger. “Look at the color.” Youngest kid Will (Maxwell Jenkins) notes that the explosion would have been red if it was rocket fuel, but it was white. “Hint,” Maureen continues, teaching while her family is stranded on a potentially dangerous world. “It’s not a chemistry question. It’s a geology question.” Her lesson gets interrupted by John, who’s prioritizing their immediate survival. Maureen ultimately passes out from a leg injury before she can get to the whole point.

The thing is, the family really needed Maureen to get to that point! That white flare was magnesium, which the Robinsons ultimately end up needing in order to save Judy’s (Taylor Russell) life after she gets trapped in the ice. Maureen could have just told them that right away instead of eating up valuable time (they have a very limited power supply and are burning daylight!) playing home school. But she doesn’t, which is Maureen’s mundane parenting flaw. She continues to prioritize order and teaching moments throughout the entire first season. Her prized possession is a whiteboard of chores! Which she still keeps up with even though her family is literally lost in space! But instead of making her a stern taskmaster or emotionally detached, which would be expected, Molly Parker plays her as warm (the smile she gives during the geology lesson) and fiercely protective of her family.

And then there’s John “Action Dad” Robinson. He interrupts Maureen’s teaching moment because he is the kind of take-charge dad we’re used to on these shows. He knows there’s only one way into the submerged ship, and only one Robinson small enough to fit into the top hatch: Will. He then picks up his 11-year-old son and prepares him to dive into below-freezing waters, placing the survival of the entire family on the kid’s small shoulders! Maureen protests a bit, but John is all-in on sending his youngest into the icy depths–until eldest kid Judy takes it upon herself to dive in, sparing her younger brother.

John’s mundane parenting flaw is that he’s too pragmatic; he’s surprisingly okay with putting his kids (and also himself) in danger if it serves the greater good. But instead of playing this trait as adversarial, Stephens sells the conflict in John when he’s called on to make these choices. He still makes those choices, though, because he has to. After all, space is dangerous for kids!

This is super clear later in the first episode when he has to choose between saving Judy, who is trapped in ice with a dwindling oxygen supply, or Will, who falls down a tunnel while on an expedition to get that magnesium Maureen couldn’t just call by name. The perfect Action Dad would have been able to save Will right away and still make it back in time to keep Judy from becoming a popsicle. But John isn’t the perfect Action Dad, and he has to chose saving one kid right away while hoping that the other survives the wait.

This one sequence establishes a parenting methodology that plays out throughout the rest of the season, which includes the parents going on solo missions that totally endanger their lives in order to save others, and more moments of the parents letting the kids get too close to the action. The kids even have to put up with their parents giving them conflicting orders about chores! Oh, the high-stakes mundanity of it all! But Lost in Space doesn’t revel in the #drama. It instead pairs two flawed individuals and shows what happens when the messy, no-clear-answers business of parenting gets lost in space.

Where to stream Lost in Space