Wife was psychotically helpless?
The wife was over-the-top helpless, passive, unable to say or do anything to deal with the situation as it emerged. It was infuriating to witness a scripted housewife character have no backbone or ability to sense immediate, life-threatening danger clearly present.
*** spoiler alert ***
Even for a 1950's stereotyped housewife, the wife (Lou) is beyond incompetent and submissive. Her husband - who she knows is suffering a horrible bad reaction to a drug that he is taking - is allowed to spend late morning and all afternoon and evening with their young son, punishing him with no food or drink and mentally and emotionally abusing him with increasing intensity. She sees it all firsthand. It escalates during dinner with a raving outburst over the kid drinking a glass of milk ... and yet, bizarrely, she allows clearly demented husband Ed to interact with the boy for hours and hours, culminating in Ed wanting to recreate a Biblical sacrifice of the kid by committing a murder-double suicide of both parents. HELLO!! Reality calling!!
Any normal mother would take SOME action, create some ruse or tell some story to get her and the kid OUT OF THAT HOUSE!!! Immediately!!! She is guilty of willful neglect through a deep moral defect within her, her lack of a maternal instinct to take action when a real threat is present, her fear of her husband blinding her to doing anything other than wind up locked inside a hallway closet. Sheesh. The kid, as a scripted character, was infinitely more powerful, real and able to make decisions and take action than mostly-paralyzed weakling mom. The character of Lou was so irritating it interfered with the entire story. There's only one doctor in the entire city??? She can't call for help from a hospital .... Police .... Fire ?? A man going insane on cortisone, with endangered child in his grasp, and she does absolutely nothing?
On a separate note, the ending was terrible. The room looks like a holding cell for the criminally insane, everyone stands around him like the Inquisition is about to begin, and the timing and pacing of his miraculous and total recovery in a 15 second recall of one incident is not even remotely plausible. The final shot ... Supposedly Healed and clearly dominating dad manhandles wife and kid and all are crushed in a weird bedside bear hug.
At the end of this movie -- I was ready to down two vials of cortisone myself and end my pain!!!!