What’s Up With Beth’s Parents On Dare Me?

One glimpse into USA’s newest series Dare Me and a key question emerges: Where on Earth are the parents of these teenage cheerleaders, and why aren’t they paying any attention to what their daughters are getting into? Based on the YA novel by Megan Abbott, the new show Dare Me is all about power dynamics among the teens and their authority figures in the cheer squad of a small Midwestern town, which means there are some messed up parental dynamics in the mix, too. But if you’ve ever read the book, you know something TV viewers will be scratching their heads about for the first few episodes: what happened to Beth’s parents, and why is everything so messed up?

Beth (Marlo Kelly) and Addy (Herizen Guardiola) are high-school cheerleaders who rule, well, not the school, but they've got dominion over their squad. But that doesn't last for long, because when new Coach Colette French (Willa Fitzgerald) comes to town, she has aims on removing Beth from her post as queen bee and captain and whipping the squad into good enough shape that they’ll be invited to perform in regional competition the following year. This… doesn’t go that well, because Beth is out for destruction, and in the book, that progresses into murder, lies, manipulation, and cheating — by both children and adults. It's hard to the feeling that really, all these girls need is to be grounded. Beth, especially. Someone please parent this young person!

In the book, Addy makes mention of her dad “giving up” on her as soon as she hit puberty because he was unable to deal with her fledgling sexuality. Her stepmother is always knocked out by sleeping pills, and her mother? That’s TBD. But Beth’s parents are a little more of a mystery.

In the novel, Addy makes allusion to Beth’s mom constantly being under the influence of pills or alcohol — she once got so high on pills that she fell head-first into their square coffee table and required stitches and more pills. There’s also another reference to her mother always being in bed and wearing a dressing gown, so it’s safe to say that Beth’s mom is going through addiction issues and doesn’t do much, if anything, for her daughter. Especially in the supervision department.

As for Beth’s dad, well, the only real note the book makes about him is that Beth once followed her dad and his paralegal to the local Hyatt hotel where they would have their extramarital romps. Beth was so angry that she carved “MANWHORE” into the hood of his car with a key. It must have been important, because she missed a big cheer event for it.

Reading Dare Me (and likely watching the show, if it sticks closely to the source material), there’s only one character who questions how much trouble these girls get into and the fact that no one seems to care about them to lead them on a better path: Matt French, Colette’s husband. This is ironic, given the fact that Matt is — major spoiler alert — the one who ends up arrested at the end of the movie for killing the man Colette was cheating on him with. He may be a murderer, but he’s the only adult in the entire work that has any common sense when it comes to the teens around him.

As the whole series progresses, we’ll see how it all shakes out — and if the “boredom of teenage girls,” as the Dare Me trailer (and book) say, ends up being the danger they think it is.