Tragic Pasts & Presents are Revealed in 'MaryLand’s Second Episode

In MaryLand’s premiere, we learned that long-simmering issues percolated between sisters Becca and Rosaline. We saw snippets of decades of resentment and passive aggression. In the second episode of this three-episode series, the trauma of the sisters’ childhood is revealed. “You love being needed. You always have,” Rosaline tells her sister. Rosaline thinks Becca was their mother’s favorite. From Rosaline’s perspective, Becca, who married Jim when she was very young, is stuck in 1995 when she was 18 and is not an adult. She doesn’t even pump her own gas. “Don’t talk to me about being an adult. I’ve got two teenage kids,” Becca tells her. “There it is. The trump card,” Rosaline snarks. “Congratulations on using your womb.” Ouch. But it quickly becomes apparent that Rosaline only knew part of the story.

After recovering from having cancer as a teen, Rosaline left for college, leaving her younger sister Becca, who was only 14 at the time, all alone to deal with their parents. Their mother, Mary, fell apart and had a “full-on nervous breakdown” after Rosaline left. She didn’t get out of bed for months and even attempted to take her own life. Becca wasn’t allowed to tell Rosaline what was going on because Rosaline had just gotten better. Rosaline thought Becca had dropped out of school because she had met Jim. But Becca dropped out to care for her parents and met Jim after she dropped out. Yes, she loves Jim, but she could “have loved someone else” and “lived somewhere else.”

The sisters learn so much about their mother, too. Becca goes to confront Pete about his relationship with their mother. “She wanted to make the move here permanent,” he tells her. “She was happy here. Really happy.” He thinks Mary would have wanted to be buried on the Isle of Man. Pete also indicates that their father knew about the affair. “I don’t even know who you are. You are just some bloke who found her dead,” Becca tells him.