Undoing John, day 3: the Delicate Genius

A lot of the problems in Elly's life seem to have the same cause: her unwillingness to act on her own accord. As an example, her inability to secure the back gate. I'd say a big part of that was John deciding it wasn't a problem because he didn't want to fumble for keys. If his petty convenience meant more to him than his family's safety, you can readily imagine that he'd mess up her attempts to raise children who aren't idiots. Case in point: Michael. His chief problem as I see it is his belief that his parents would stop loving or caring for him because they had a second child. The result is the obnoxious, sullen, whiny attention hog he still sort of is. John's take on things is that Mike would soon get over it and start doing the caring big brother thing and no action need be taken to reassure him. Due to his passive-aggressive moral bullying, Elly managed to convince herself that he didn't need the pep talk she wanted to give him after all. Even though years passed and there Mike was, not dealing with Liz's presence, they still did nothing. Their inaction validated his apathy to the world around him, leading directly to him becoming the spiritually vacant, callous kiss-up we see nowadays. Once Elly starts seeing things for what they are, the 'friendly', 'hard-working', 'caring' recipient of their generosity is gonna start looking like a sponging jerk who ignores his kids and lives of his wife. That being said, she'll have something real to scream about.