Janet

From Candypedia
Janet
GenderFemale
SpeciesDog
Family
DebutRising Temperature, page 5
May 27, 2007 (2007-05-27)

Janet is the adoptive mother of Abbey and Molly and the wife of Kevin, which makes her the dog half of a cat-and-dog marriage in Roseville. She habitually makes extra cookies, and when Abbey finally decides to talk about his past, Janet is the adult he goes to. When Abbey announces that he is going to catch a bus and find his birth mother himself, Janet takes the job off his hands, phone calls and all.

Personality

Janet’s hair-ruffling veto is difficult to argue with in At Loose Ends.

Janet hears the front door and is halfway down the stairs before anybody has managed a hello. She fusses, she bakes, she boops noses, she sings in the car, and she cheerfully calls herself out when one of her jokes lands badly. Under all of that she is keeping a rather close eye on her two kids, and she does most of her worrying somewhere they can’t see it. She is also perfectly capable of shouting through a bedroom door when the situation calls for it.

Janet talks about her family the way other people talk about a lucky break. When Mike asks in the kitchen whether Abbey is new to the household, she works out that it has been about four years, and she is not the least bit surprised that Abbey never mentions it himself.[1] She tells him that she and Kevin badly wanted a family and had their share of difficulties along the way, and then sums it up: “you work with what you’re given, and things can still turn out perfect”.[1] She calls the household a little unique, and clearly means it as a compliment.[1]

By the time Abbey asks, Janet has already started solving the problem.

Janet saves her worry for when the kids have left the room. In At Loose Ends she smiles Abbey out the door to Tess’s party, and only once she is alone does she let herself say, “Please, let it be something good.”[2] She spends that same evening at her laptop making calls, and by the time Abbey hears anything she already has places lined up to visit.[3] What Molly gets told about all of this is a good deal gentler than what Abbey gets told.[3]

Janet rarely needs to raise her voice to get her way. She turns down Abbey’s bus plan with a grin and a hand in his hair rather than a lecture, and she leans on him about Tess’s beach trip with nothing sharper than a suggestion that he could move his appointment.[4][5] The exception is played for laughs. When Molly innocently reports that Abbey and Daisy are upstairs discussing the baby they’re making, Janet is up the stairs in a flash. After a warning glare and a closed door, she rattles the knob and bellows “YOU BETTER BE TALKING ABOUT BASEBALL!!”[6][7]

Janet is also a bit of a goof, and she knows it. She belts out Gwen Stefani on the long drive to the cemetery while everyone else sleeps, then turns the radio down in a hurry, rather embarrassed.[8][9] Back in her debut she apologises to the boys for gabbing on, which she had been, a little.[1]

Appearance

Janet is an adult dog with long ears that flop forward. They are the first thing Paulo notices about her, and the reason he cannot work out how she and Kevin could be Abbey’s birth parents.[10] Veronica’s commentary on the scene spells out the rule behind the joke: in this world, cats and dogs cannot have children together, so Janet’s kids were always going to arrive some other way.[1]

Janet sheds her winter coat and offers an overnight stay.

She dresses like somebody’s mum. Her introduction has her in flowered oven mitts, and she pushes a pair of glasses up her nose while working at the laptop late at night.[1][3] She also wears a winter coat, which comes off as soon as she is back indoors.[11]

Significant events

Janet first appears in Rising Temperature. She comes downstairs when Abbey brings Paulo and Mike home and announces that there are cookies in the oven for everyone.[10] Paulo’s confusion about a dog having a cat for a son earns him a shout from Mike about adoption, while Janet answers Mike’s politer questions in the kitchen.[10][1] In Moving On, Abbey comes home having decided to see a counselor and takes Janet up on her long-standing offer to talk.[12] In Invitation, Janet worries about him skipping Tess’s beach trip and suggests moving the appointment, but Abbey insists on keeping the plan they set up.[5]

Around Christmas, At Loose Ends gives Janet her biggest role. She excitedly reads Abbey his invitation to Tess’s Christmas party, and he refuses it because he means to go looking for his mother.[13] Janet takes the search over herself and sends him to the party. Later that night she turns up at Tess’s door with the news that his mother, Charlotte, has died.[14][15] The next morning she drives Abbey and Daisy for hours to a snowy cemetery. At the grave she explains that Charlotte knew her situation would trouble the kids and chose to disappear rather than burden them, so that even Janet only learned of her death the day before.[16] The drive home is quiet, and she sits with Abbey at his bedside that night.[17]

Her later appearances are smaller and mostly domestic. She rests a hand on a sleeping Molly as the New Year counts down in Ten Seconds to Midnight.[18] In Safe Boundaries she interrupts Abbey and Daisy’s condom-shopping conversation, and Abbey later refuses to keep the condoms in the house, since Janet is already suspicious.[7][19] Later, she buys him SAT books and expects him to use them.[20] The BCI story Everyday Life has her drive the kids to school with a kiss on the cheek, and she stands behind Abbey and Molly with the sparklers at the park in New Year’s Resolution.[21][22]

Major relationships

Abbey

Janet has an answer for Abbey’s anger, even if it needs time.

Abbey hands Janet his worst days one at a time, years after she and Kevin first brought him to Roseville.[23] In Moving On he comes home and reminds her that she once said she would always be there when he was ready to talk. She reaches for him before he has finished the sentence, and Daisy watches the hug through the window.[12] Later, in At Loose Ends, he wants to find his mother himself and accuses Janet of keeping things from him. She answers seriously that she lost contact when he was little and has been waiting for word ever since, and then pulls him close: “It’s not your responsibility. It’s mine.”[4] Veronica’s commentary says as much in her own words: Janet is the adult here, and Abbey should not be carrying so much on his shoulders.[4]

Abbey is ashamed when Janet praises him for fighting for what is right. On the drive to the cemetery she calls him her little Abbey, “always fighting for what’s right”, and he slumps in his seat, because as Veronica notes she does not have the full picture of his temper.[24] When he asks about his anger she points him back to his counseling and tells him it is good to be aware of his faults, and his reply is “Sometimes, I wonder.”[9] She asks whether he still blames himself for what happened to his family, and tells him not to.[25] At his bedside that night she apologises to him. He tells her that she and Kevin have given them a normal life, and lets her kiss his forehead goodnight.[17]

He still calls her Janet. Veronica has said Abbey is such an inherently formal guy that she can see him struggling with anything else, especially when he is thinking about his mother, though she imagines him letting go of it eventually.[26]

Molly

Molly’s accidental name for Janet becomes the name Janet is happy to answer to.

Molly decided what to call Janet on the very first car ride, and Janet let her. In the At Loose Ends flashback, Janet turns around in the passenger seat to tell the newly fostered kids that their father won’t be around anymore and their mother has to get better before she can see them. Then she brightens up and declares that for now it’s Janet and Kevin at their service.[23] Molly tries out “Jana”, Abbey corrects her, and Janet says Jana’s fine.[27] Her next joke, that Molly can call Kevin “big ol’ smellyface” if she likes, earns her a playful bop from Kevin, and Molly screams “DON’T HURT HER” and cannot be talked down. Janet’s verdict on herself is a muttered “Smooth, Janet.”[27] Veronica has since said that Jana is, at this point, Molly’s version of “Mom”.[26]

Janet tries to protect Molly by leaving certain things unsaid. On the night of the party she tells Molly only that she is checking whether her mommy is feeling better.[3] The next morning, when Molly asks whether they’re going to see Mommy, Janet and Abbey share an uncomfortable look over her head.[28] The rest is ordinary mothering: a hand on Molly asleep at the kitchen table, a reminder to leave her brother alone, a fond look at the fireworks.[18][6][22] In the BCI story Everyday Life she teases Molly about having such a caring, attentive brother, and Molly wishes he’d care a great deal less.[21] The BCI story Molly’s Adventure shows her indulgent side. She refuses to let Molly sell cookies without a partner, suspects Molly is lying about having one, and lets her go anyway to see how she gets out of it.[29][30]

Kevin

Janet leaves Kevin in charge of Molly and heads for the car in At Loose Ends.

Janet usually does most of the talking when she and Kevin appear together. Their wedding photo hangs over the sofa, and she answers his call from upstairs with a “honey”.[12][10] It is Janet who tells Mike that the two of them really wanted to start a family and had some difficulties along the way, and Veronica’s commentary muses that, were they human, one or both of them would be infertile.[1] When Abbey’s crisis comes, Janet handles the phone calls and the driving while Kevin stays home to watch Molly.[28] The non-canon Ships Ahoy, Season Five gives them a bedroom strip in which Kevin calls her a brilliant mother and Janet hides under the blanket in embarrassment.[31]

Minor relationships

Daisy

Janet treats Daisy as a fellow member of the Abbey-minding team rather than as a teenager underfoot. When she arrives at Tess’s party with bad news and Daisy frets, Janet reassures her that Abbey asked to be told right away.[15] The next morning Daisy is in the back seat for the drive to the cemetery, because she asked Janet if she could come.[28] The alliance has its limits, of course. Daisy is the voice on the other side of the bedroom door announcing that buying condoms is a team effort while Janet demands to hear about baseball.[7]

Quotes

It’s not your responsibility. It’s mine. Janet, pulling Abbey close and taking over the search for his mother in At Loose Ends

It just goes to show: you work with what you’re given, and things can still turn out perfect Janet, explaining her family to Mike over a tray of cookies in Rising Temperature

Now why would I let you do something so dangerous?! Janet, laughing off Abbey’s bus plan while ruffling his hair in At Loose Ends

You can call Kevin ‘big ol’ smellyface’ if you want. Janet, to little Molly, moments before the joke backfires, in At Loose Ends

Please, let it be something good. Janet, alone, after sending Abbey off to the party in At Loose Ends

YOU BETTER BE TALKING ABOUT BASEBALL!! Janet, through Abbey’s bedroom door in Safe Boundaries

Trivia

  • Janet and Kevin were originally written as Abbey’s foster parents. Veronica later retconned it to full adoption, with a firm “They’re his parents!” in her commentary.[10]
  • At Loose Ends was first plotted with Abbey and Daisy taking a bus out of town on hotel money, complete with a one-bed comedy scene. Veronica rewrote it so that Janet does the searching instead.[32]
  • The song she sings along to in the car is Gwen Stefani’s “The Sweet Escape”.[8]
  • Veronica’s entire commentary on the page where Janet reads out the party invitation is “I like Janet.”[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Chapter 38: Rising Temperature, page 6
  2. ↑ Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 8
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 11
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 7
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Chapter 41: Invitation, page 2
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Chapter 78: Safe Boundaries, page 8
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Chapter 78: Safe Boundaries, page 9
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 38
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 39
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 Chapter 38: Rising Temperature, page 5
  11. ↑ Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 25
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Chapter 40: Moving On, page 6
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 6
  14. ↑ Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 21
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 22
  16. ↑ Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 41
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 47
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Chapter 73: Ten Seconds to Midnight, page 27
  19. ↑ Chapter 78: Safe Boundaries, page 25
  20. ↑ Chapter 89: Guest of Honor, page 5
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Everyday Life, page 11 🔒 (members only)
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 13
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 17
  24. ↑ Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 33
  25. ↑ Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 24
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 “Ask response on whether Abbey or Molly will ever call Kevin and Janet Mom and Dad”. Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr. 2026-03-26.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 18
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 32
  29. ↑ Molly’s Adventure, page 3 🔒 (members only)
  30. ↑ Molly’s Adventure, page 4 🔒 (members only)
  31. ↑ Ships Ahoy, Season Five, page 10 🔒 (members only)
  32. ↑ Chapter 69: At Loose Ends, page 9
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