Kate McCallister Home Alone

While the fan focus of Home Alone tends to be on Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) or his antagonists, Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern), Kevin’s mom, Kate (Catherine O’Hara), is also frequently a strong contender for the character people are most “obsessed” with. This recently reiterated by the fact that she was the anchor to an SNL sketch wherein Ariana Grande plays Kevin amidst what turns out to be a family bloodbath thanks to all the booby traps he still didn’t dismantle. Before the bloodshed, however, emphasis is put on how, as Kate (played here by Ashley Padilla) reminds, “I’ve been awake for seventy-two hours!” When the rest of the family abruptly shows up to join the “love-in” for Kevin, Kate asks Peter (played here by Mikey Day) how they got back so quickly. He shrugs that they took the “two days later” morning flight she didn’t want to wait for, thereby subjecting herself to an ultimately needless Planes, Trains and Automobiles kind of traveling hell. All Kate can say to that is, “I’ve been awake so long, I’m legally insane!” 

Her “high-strung” nature in the sketch is conveyed in much the same way as it is in the actual movie, where Chris Columbus and John Hughes’ introduction to her character is an almost immediate depiction of someone who is constantly freaking the fuck out. Of course, who could really blame Kate, a woman with five kids, two of which (Buzz [Devin Ratray] and Kevin) must surely have some kind of DSM-related mental illness, for being this way? Especially now that she’s also dealing with another set of kids in her household: nieces and nephews that aren’t even from her side of the family. Indeed, it’s apparent that Kate has allowed her life to be overrun with McCallisters and it’s definitely turned her into someone who is perennially “on edge” (or even more on edge, if she did, in fact, already bear that personality type to begin with). 

It doesn’t help that their “relaxing” getaway to Paris commences with no one’s alarm going off because of a power outage the previous night, prompting Kate to be the first to jump out of bed and scream, “Peter!” The two then scream in unison, “We slept in!” From there, John Williams’ now signature “Holiday Flight” instrumental starts to play as everyone in the house goes apeshit trying to get ready in time. But it’s only Kate who, once on the plane, still can’t relax, telling Peter (John Heard) that she has the terrible feeling that they forgot something. When she realizes what that “something” is—Kevin—she screams her son’s name and essentially doesn’t stop screaming for the rest of the movie. 

Upon landing in Paris, Kate immediately makes a beeline for the nearest pay phone, ousting a French woman who’s talking on it so that she can call the local police station (very entitled Karen behavior, to be sure, along with asking a flight attendant if a private plane is an option). The police operator, Rose (Kate Johnson), answers the call and listens to Kate explain what she wants (for someone to go over to their house and tell their son that they’re coming back home). Rose takes this as a matter for the Family Crisis Intervention division, to which Kate protests, “No, it’s not a family crisis.” Rose pays no mind and calls out to her co-worker (played by Larry Hankin a.k.a. Mr. Heckles in Friends), “Larry, can you pick up? There’s some lady on hold. Sounds kind of hyper.” Oh, but if Rose thought that was “hyper,” she hadn’t seen anything yet. Nor had Larry, who, after asking her a series of rote questions to determine whether or not this matter is in “his area,” calls out, “Rose! Hyper on [line] two” before transferring Kate back to the police.

Although Kate doesn’t go “full-on Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment” during this ping-ponging conversation, it’s the first example viewers get of her proceeding to go “a bit nuts” on those who work in a service/public-facing capacity. And that they would brand her as “hyper” is the modern-day equivalent of calling her a “Karen.” The archetype known for treating those who work in service like shit and constantly demanding to speak to the manager. Kate will proceed to radiate this vibe all along the rest of her odyssey to get back home. This includes pawing her way onto a flight to Dallas (thanks to some begging and bartering with an old woman [Billie Bird, a Hughes “favorite” who also played Grandma Dorothy in Sixteen Candles]) and then to Scranton. It’s there that she has a Steve Martin in Planes, Trains and Automobiles-inspired breakdown of her own while trying to effectively convey her desperation to the desk agent. 

And then, as is the Hughes way of interconnecting his work, the moment is tied back to said film with the appearance of John Candy, now in the role of “Polka King” Gus Polinski, who can’t help but overhear Kate’s “dilemma” and offer her a ride in his polka band’s rental van, as they, too, are in their own traveling bind after their flight got cancelled, prompting them to drive from Scranton to Milwaukee instead. On that ride filled with polka and macabre stories, Kate has a few moments where it’s clear she’s questioning if maybe she should have just stayed in Paris and waited to leave on the morning flight that was two days later. As in, the very same one the rest of her family chose to take, landing them at the McCallister residence almost right after Kate gets there.

Which begs the question of whether, in its own way, Home Alone is an unwitting cautionary tale against being “hyper” a.k.a. a Karen. A person who, in their bid to get what they want tout de suite, only manages to run in circles and end up no further than anyone else despite their snappy, “give it to me now” attitude. And though, sure, it can be said that Kate had a “right” to act this way because of the “protective mama bear” mode that kicked in, one gets the sense that Kevin’s situation isn’t the only “special circumstance” that makes her act this way. Besides that, the viewer doesn’t see any of the other family members acting nearly as panicked to the point of treating those “in the field” of service so rudely (with Peter “lightly” doing so during a scene at his brother’s apartment, though that’s more related to his language barrier frustration than his anxiety about Kevin). 

So while Karen, er, Kate might have, to some extent, achieved her seemingly impossible goal of getting back to Kevin in time for Christmas Day, in the end, based on the rest of her family’s arrival time being the same as hers, she could have done so with far less, well, “hyperness.”