Should You Try To Make Things Work With Divorce?

What Is This Thing?

Frances and Robert have been trudging through their marriage for a while, not especially happy nor particularly motivated to make a big change. A shocking accident at a friend's birthday party jolts Frances into asking Robert for a divorce, but when ensuing events make her reconsider, he lets her know she was right the first time.

When Is It On?

Sundays at 10 PM ET on HBO, starting October 9.

Why Was It Made Now?

Sarah Jessica Parker, who plays Frances, has never had any movie role in recent years that got her as much acclaim as she earned as the lead on HBO's long-running, era-defining sitcom Sex And The City, so the time seems right for her to quit fighting her destiny and come home to the network that made her famous. Also, two seasons of Channel 4/Amazon's critical hit Catastrophe have made its creator/star Sharon Horgan a bankable name as a sitcom creator; her honesty and profanity as the mind behind Divorce are right on-brand for HBO.

What's Its Pedigree?

As previously mentioned, Horgan created the show (though unlike her previous sitcom hits, Pulling and Catastrophe, here she created but does not star). Parker has been well known to HBO subscribers since the late '90s. Divorce casts her opposite Thomas Haden Church, an Oscar nominee for Sideways as well as a sitcom veteran (Wings, Ned & Stacey). Joining them in the first few episodes are Molly Shannon (Saturday Night Live, the indie feature Other People which is currently available on demand and which I CANNOT RECOMMEND ENOUGH IT IS SO GOOD) and Talia Balsam (Mad Men) as Frances's friends Diane and Dallas; Tracy Letts (Homeland) as Diane's husband Nick; Maddie Corman (the season premiere of Younger) as Frances's real estate agent; Jemaine Clement as Julian, with whom Frances has been having an affair. IMDb tells us that future episodes will feature J. Smith-Cameron (Rectify); Robert Forster (Jackie Brown); Dean Winters (30 Rock); Jeffrey DeMunn (The Walking Dead); Gillian Vigman (New Girl); Desmin Borges (You're The Worst); Sarita Choudhury (Homeland); and Leslie Hendrix (Law & Order), among many others.

...And?

I have been married for nineteen and a half years, I guess pretty happily. But not so happily, apparently, that I couldn't relate to Frances's silent tolerance, as she's getting ready for a party in the series premiere's cold open, of Robert's accusatory tale of how her lingering in the only bathroom in which he feels capable of moving his bowels required that he void them, instead, in the garage, into a large coffee canister.

When Frances has nothing to say in reply, Robert moves on, before returning almost immediately to admit, "Well, I may or may not have actually taken a shit in this coffee can? The point is well made. Equal time in the bathroom." Frances monosyllabically agrees. Then:

Even in a good marriage, it's possible to experience moments of contempt a lot like this one, and every part of this exchange felt very true to me -- as is the show, generally. Frances and her friends, Dallas and Diane, are savagely mean about all the men around them, but quietly enough that no one can hear. (When Frances asks Dallas about the guest at Diane's birthday party who'd been talking to her so intently -- or, "that human loaf of bread," as Dallas calls him -- and Diane adds that his wife just died, Dallas gasps, "Gee. I didn't know. He only told me fifty fucking times.") Diane's party comes to kind of an abrupt end, but first we get to see so many instances of middle-aged people's marriages, curdled into indifference if not mutual disgust; Nick's toast to his wife on her fiftieth birthday is proof that Frances, Diane, and Dallas aren't the only bitches present, but tiny cuts wound just as badly as big ones. Horgan's observations are so sharp, her friends must be terrified into staying on their best behaviour around her lest she mine their most casual cruelties for material.

...But?

I know people -- including my dear colleague and wife Sarah D. Bunting -- who still aren't done being irritated at Parker for her performance as Carrie Bradshaw. I dipped in and out of Sex And The City, so I'm pretty indifferent, but if she's a trigger for you, this show might be tough: it's easy to imagine Frances as a Sliding Doors Carrie who married an Aidan type, had a couple of kids, and after a few years let her innate impulsiveness and selfishness lead her to make some regrettable decisions.

Somewhat related, for you Parker non-partisans out there: in several shots, it looks like Parker's required that the show's crew shoot her only through a generous glob of Joan Collins™ brand petroleum jelly.

Another off-model issue for the show is Clement's Julian. I liked Clement when he was playing "himself" on Flight Of The Conchords, but he doesn't have a huge amount of range, and while the rest of the show feels naturalistic, his cartoonishness is jarring.

My biggest issue with the show so far -- I've watched the first three episodes -- is the way the series premiere closes: having determined that Frances has been cheating on him with Julian, Robert changes the locks on their house and tells her, "You know who you are? You're Jesse James. And I get to be Sandra Bullock, and I get to rise from the ashes of humiliation and win a FUCKING ACADEMY AWARD." Funny! (And the fact that Robert is the kind of person who would know that much backstory about Sandra Bullock's biography and personal tragedy tells us so much about his character.) But he goes on to say he agrees with her that they should get divorced -- but not amicably, like she wanted -- and adds, "I'm gonna make your children hate you." We learn before long exactly how big an idiot Robert is, and that his grasp of ethics is slippery at best. (Obviously, so are Frances's, given her infidelity, but...trust me, there's a story coming about Robert that's a bark-out-loud shock.) But delivering a threat like this to his children's other parent is actually kind of monstrous, right? In a show set in the present and not Mad Men times? Have I just been misled by all the celebrity puff pieces about divorcing parents continuing to respect each other for the kids' sake? Are real divorcing parents actually more like Jenelle and Nathan on Teen Mom 2?! Or is this really meant to show us the kind of bullshit Frances has been putting up with all these years and give Robert a moral failing as great as hers, or greater? I'm not sure, but it felt to me -- even if he turned out not to really mean it -- like the moment I had to turn against Robert absolutely and forever, so if that was the point, I guess it worked.

...So?

If you like Catastrophe but wish it had more fights and less baby business, this is the show you've been waiting for.