Mother's Day (Rugrats)
Tommy, Phil, and Lil attempt to find the perfect mother for Chuckie (who is raised only by his father Chas) while sharing their favorite memories about their moms.
The episode was featured on the 1998 VHS release Rugrats: Mommy Mania, and was later made available for digital download along with the rest of the fourth season.
He is unable to obtain it after being chased by a bee and Stu's malfunctioning Mother's Day invention, which is a vacuum-like machine that destroys a majority of the lawn.
Cella Nichols Duffy, Gabor Csupo, Arlene Klasky, Paul De Meyer, Stem, and Weiss also produced the episode.
[5] In 2016, co-creator Paul Germain revealed that the concept for the episode, and the discussion about the status of Chuckie's mother, was previously pitched to Nickelodeon executives.
He consulted with fellow co-creator Arlene Klasky, and they concluded that the only two possible ways to address the character were that she was divorced from Chas, or had died before the series' debut.
[6] Germain and Klasky initially planned to portray the character as divorced, but Nickelodeon executives rejected the idea, feeling that the subject would be inappropriate for younger viewers.
"[6] Germain stated this prevented them from saying much about the character in earlier seasons, adding: "We mention that she exists but we don't tell you what happened to her.
[5] On February 6, 2018, "Mother's Day" was released on the Rugrats: Season 4 DVD by Paramount Home Media Distribution.
[18] The episode was later made purchasable as a digital download on the iTunes Store and Amazon Video, along with the rest of the fourth season.
[20] In 1998, Eric Schmuckler of The New York Times pointed to the "Mother's Day" special as an example of the show's balance between featuring an "always sunny and usually silly" tone while also being "poignant".
Mic praised the episode as an example of Nickelodeon's potential to cover a serious subject, noting its treatment of "the loss of a parent" as one of the series' most memorable moments.
[25] Moviepilot's Kristy Anderson wrote that the development of Chuckie's backstory was a surprise as "few would have expected to be confronted by the topic of death while watching a cartoon about babies".
[26] In their book Flickipedia: Perfect Films for Every Occasion, Holiday, Mood, Ordeal, and Whim, authors Michael Atkinson and Laurel Shifrin echoed Anderson's sentiment, commenting that the episode could "hit you like a truck if you let it".
[27] The poem written and narrated by Chuckie's mother was praised by Moviepilot's Daniel Pearson,[28] and was included in a list of the top eight most heartfelt moments in animated television by Mara Mullikin of the same publication.
In 2016, Caroline Bologna from The Huffington Post praised the episode for showing "a joyful depiction of breastfeeding" and for normalizing it to a wider audience.
[31] Priscilla Blossom of the motherhood website Romper.com also praised the scene as addressing reproductive health, along with the portrayal of Tommy's premature birth and time in a neonatal intensive care unit.
Gay and Lesbian Perspectives on Parenting", scholars Jack Drescher, Deborah F. Glazer, Lee Crespi, and David Schwartz analyzed "Mother's Day" as an extension of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott's theories on early childhood.
They highlighted Chuckie's realization that his father acts like a mother as "a moment of postmodern insight" that expands the definition of motherhood.
