More unfortunate implications of a broken leg.....

Another problem raised by the current arc is that it reminds us that Elly's need for praise tends to run fairly deeply. Before we switch to Lawrence crying his eyes out in the vain hope that at least his mother might feel bad for him, we had to endure Elly taking credit for other people's accomplishments and expecting praise for stuff she was supposed to do anyway. This reveals that she was always an insecure and needy individual who craved praise and felt put out if she didn't get what she wanted. It also gives us a clue as to why she is always so steamed at Phil for winning all the time. She envied the praise he got for things he accomplished by dint of working towards a goal and didn't find the smiles and shrugging about how she tried her best but failed that she did get. This makes it sort of easy for her to inflate the minor victories that occur in her daily life into achievements she deems worthy of greater praise than they're actually worth. Since she still gets the patronizing reassurance she detests, her anger at Phil and all the other obstructions to the fawning over she thinks is her birthright mounts. It also makes it easy to see why, sooner or later, she tries to hijack celebrations for other people and turn them into her own personal ego boost.