Today is the anniversary of my mother’s birthday (I never called her mom or mum, though dad was fine for my father — perhaps Paul Weston could help me with that one). Aside from June 15 reminding of Ellen Marie Hart’s (nee Jones) birth, technical problems with Netflix last night were the circumstances for our viewing (with Isabelle) The United States of Tara, which provided another reminder of mother. We had begun our Roku experience with Parenthood, a series that the Mrs. has enjoyed when I travel. But when we moved from the Pilot to Episode One, Netflix wouldn’t cooperate. In searching for an alternative — we had partial access to Netflix on-line streaming, we came up with UST. It is about a middle-class interior designer, wife, and mother of two adolescents, who has a personality disorder. The posters for the show reveal four different Tara’s. We only saw three in the Pilot, which was plenty. In addition to the “normal” Tara, we saw T, a raunchy, drug-taking, sex-seeking floozy, and Buck, a Tom-woman who cross dresses as a working-class carpenter-like figure.
Weird.
As much as I admire Toni Collette, her skills could not over my discomfort with how nonchalantly the show treated psychiatric “challenges.” The children, one in high school, the other in junior high, were never phased by the arrival of the floozy or seeing their mother as a beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking, foul-mouthed, get-er-done ruffian. For them it was fun to have mom show up in different characters. And dad was not any more help. The versions of his wife caused no ripple in his countenance and the possibilities of amour with T made him wish (though he knew he shouldn’t) that Tara had more gitty-up in the boudoir.
Are you kidding? My mother was bi-polar, God bless her. For the last 43 years of her life, starting with a hysterectomy, she varied between highs that saw uncontrolled and unexplained spending, and lows that parked her in front of a steady stream of bad network television, including news about murders in Philadelphia that made her think her son was always in danger. As an adolescent, college and graduate student, young husband, and even middle-aged man, those swings were never easy to take. At first they were embarrassing. Over time they produced sorrow for the torments my mother had to endure (though she never wanted to take her meds).
If two versions of my mother were hard to handle, I don’t think doubling the trouble would have made mood swings or multiple personalities pleasant, entertaining, or life spicier. Disturbing is the notion that people in Hollywood or somewhere connected to it can trivialize psychiatric disorders in the way that this show does. I can imagine some genuine comedy material here if writers and producers explored the genuinely funny moments that come with manic-depression, say the way that Whit Stillman does in Last Days of Disco. But UTS doesn’t cut it. Meanwhile, Parenthood is premised on the family angst that comes with the discovery that a young son has Asperger’s. Go figure.
Old Life 