But What If It Had Been Called Trophy Wives...?

It's always bittersweet to watch a show when you know it's definitely not coming back, but the people who worked on it didn't. In the case of Trophy Wife, the last couple of episodes were clearly setting up situations that could have become Season 2 plotlines if there had been a Season 2 -- Kate's expressed desire to finish her college education in last week's episode, and Pete's considering giving up his job at his comically evil law firm in the finale. Kate's referring to Pete "eating like a pregnant woman" while working her way through a burger stolen off a stranger's room service cart was also a bad omen of something I had feared the show might try to pull on us, but even I won't go so far as to say the show's cancellation was worth it if it spared us a possible Kate pregnancy. I'm sad that the show won't get the chance to find its Season 2 groove.

I was in the tank for Trophy Wife since it was first announced a year and a half ago, but that didn't render me blind to its faults. One was Meg. I assume the show's use of the "feckless friend" archetype was to throw Kate's relative functionality into sharper relief, but no matter how close Meg and Kate had been in the past, they basically have nothing in common by the time the series kicks off and, if they were real people, probably wouldn't be friends anymore (or, at least, wouldn't be close enough for Meg to commit frequent pop-ins). Another was Hillary, recast after the pilot and turned into a completely different kind of character in the process: can you imagine the Hillary we came to know by the season/series finale ever even considering going to a concert, never mind sneaking in booze?

But the biggest problem of all was the one for whom the series was named. Kate spent the series defined entirely by what she wasn't: not a mom, not a professional, not privy to all the details of Pete's life before her, not a barista. "Not a college graduate" was a new one that seemed to show the producers' acknowledgement of how little we ever got to know about Kate's past and her hopes for the future -- a promising development! And now one that will never come to fruition.

I wouldn't have watched every single episode, of course, if Trophy Wife hadn't gotten more right than not. Bert, the youngest Harrison kid, was like the 2.0 version of Modern Family's Manny with all the bugs worked out -- quirky, not insufferably precocious. Warren got to be even more of a weirdo, and a good male counterpart, in his unshakable optimism, for his network cousin Sue Heck.

The real magic, of course, came from Diane and Jackie. Producers tried to play each of them off Kate -- for hare-brained school lunch business schemes (Jackie) or tests of parenting competence (Diane) or romantic advice (both of them); but Jackie and Diane were practically their own show within the show, a lovable odd couple thrown and kept together by circumstance/Pete. The reveal in the season finale that Diane and Jackie were actually sufficiently fond of each other to enjoy spending weekends away together really tickled me: of course Jackie would want to go to a beautiful resort on anyone else's dime; but just as Diane can complicate her icy perfection with a secret relationship with Russ Bradley Morrison, she can also find reasons to secretly enjoy the company of a goofy mess like Jackie. It makes both of them more fun. ...Made. It made both of them more fun! Sigh.

This glimpse at Jackie and Diane's secret friendship offered an alternate-universe version of the show -- one where Pete is a part-time parent/part-time character, but the show mostly revolves around his two ex-wives and the way they navigate their unique friendship while raising the three kids they have between them. Maybe Pete dates a variety of unsuitable women? Maybe Jackie and Diane try to set him up with women they think are good options? Maybe Peter broke up with Jackie because he came out late in life? And maybe Hillary is in boarding school?

It's too late to fix Trophy Wife, of course, but I still want Sarah Haskins to make another show someday, and I hope next time she'll realize she doesn't have to have "normal" characters for the freaks to play off. If everyone's a freak, we'll all have more fun.