Elephant in the Room: The Parent Trap

Welcome to the newest recurring piece that Our Bad has decided to share with you. Each week one of us will address "The Elephant in the Room", or something serious that we feel people should know or be talking about but just aren't. After much deliberation, we decided that the first elephant we are going to attack is one that's going to strike near and dear to a lot of hearts: The Parent Trap. We bet growing up you never once questioned the premise of this beloved movie, but that's exactly what we're about to do.

Imagine growing up as an only child with a single parent. Wishing time and time again you had a sibling, a complete family, and then you go away to camp and just happen to meet one? In the days that follow you come to find out that you and your identical twin were separated at birth for no good reason, and your parents decided to just dip away to opposite parts of the earth?

The important thing to note is that the choice to split up there is not just a decision you make on a whim. It's not like you have a one night stand, wake up to infant screams and then go your separate ways with one each. No, these sick individuals Nick and Elizabeth went through nine months of a twin pregnancy (which I'm assuming is crazier than regular pregnancy just from simple mathematical theory) and then afterwards decided to split the winnings and pretend the other human being they made no longer existed.

And the absolute worst part about all of this is that the whole premise of the movie is GETTING THE PARENTS BACK TOGETHER!!!! As if they were separated on terms compleeeeeetely out of their own control, and he just left, and they didn't try and forget the offspring they had running around with a different accent across the Atlantic. Or as if they didn't have children at-risk of identity crisis or neglect.

Then they meet and it's like "Oh wow, it's so nice to see you! Our children (that were never meant to meet at all which was our decision) are such cute little rascals. Let's go dump your mean girlfriend in the pool".

That might add up to some of you, but it doesn't to us. And this movie was such a hit (to a point where it was made twice) that it is a part of everyone's childhood, so thinking about all of this now is just troubling.

And a big shout out to pre-narcotic Lindsay Lohan and the characters she played for handling this better than any whatever-age-they-were year old would. Science shows (and some of us were Psych majors so don't ask questions) that anything like this would clearly give the average kid some sort of serious serious emotional complex that would affect all of their future relationships and take years of therapy to break through. In fact, maybe Lindsay knew this, and pondered it for the years following filming. Maybe it troubled her so much that she took on the weight of that reality and it forced her down the self-destructive roads she went. The movie that made Lindsay, may have ruined her as well.

And there you have it people. What started as an all-time classic is now an airbrushed fairyland version of what should be a disturbing story, and our very first "Elephant in the Room" brought to light.