Mentally Chill
by ELEANOR MORROW
There's a scene near the end of the first season of The United States of Tara when I realized what was different about Diablo Cody's season-long stage play about mental illness. While the title character and her husband are trying to figure out where Tara went splitsville, Tara's sister Charmaine is babysitting the kids. After dinner, Patton Oswalt, Charmaine's sometimes fuck-buddy, stops by to watch Lost...with Charmaine's new bf and the rest of the kooky family. The camera pans across as they all watch Jack and Kate and Locke and Hurley and Sayid and Sawyer time-travel, and they're all absorbed in the mise-en-scene of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.
That's when I asked myself: when have I ever watched characters on TV consuming TV? It's an everyday fact of existence except for those charming people who drone, "I don't waaaaatch TV." Above all, this show is Zola and all the other naturalists. The United States of Tara may not be real life, but it's definitely life. United States of Tara works better for people who have seen all the dreck that television has to offer, and are capable of appreciating how far the medium has come in the hands of Spielberg and Diablo.
Yet United States of Tara also offers some old-school TV pleasures: the kind of people you would actually want to know in real life, would want to emulate, are terrified to see fail and are elated when they succeed. In this way, Tara is a lot more like say, Home Improvement than Juno.
To be fair, the show's also attempted plenty of storylines you'll never see on TV: workplace harassment, therapy failing, women ending up with the wrong guy, bi crush makes out with your Mom's 16 year old alter ego. Because Tara isn't the same old shit, it falls on its face sometime. But once you acknowledge this show isn't going to be all giggles, you do like Charmaine does - you lower your standards.
Some can barely stand watching Tara's sister Charmaine, played effortlessly but subtly by Rosemarie Dewitt. She's a mess. Her character got a bad boob-job, so she flashed her parents. They gave her the money to fix it. Her sister's practically ruined her life, but she still loves her sister. She's a little overwrought for a secondary character, but rarely have women been the centerpiece of a comedy or drama in this fashion, and flawed women at that.
That's the way it is for pretty much every member of Tara's family. Their lives revolve around her, and her insanity. At first it was daughter Katie (Brie Larson) who gave her mother the most shit. But really that was the show's clever subterfuge. Of course the moody Katie can empathize with her nutso mom - it's the men who have the deeper problems, who have to pretend to be OK with Tara long after they're not. Tara's children could be the same little Juno-clones they were when the season began, but they're both better actors than Ellen Page, and they bring a lot more depth to the role of witty tween.
The mystery of Tara's problem took hold of the show after I reviewed it many moons ago. According to people in a position to know, Tara was raped by this dude named Trip at boarding school. What we basically learn in the season finale is that it's a lot more complicated, and that Tara's gay son Marshall wishes he had gotten sent off to CT boarding school instead of being the only feglia in Kansas. The dark depths of what actually occurred to change Tara are to be saved for the show's well-deserved second season. Despite getting panned by MSM critics, audiences flocked to the show in droves and made it Showtime's most watched serial.
The setting (Overland Park, Kansas) is totally besides the point - Tara's family is the setting, and they are led by John Corbett tolerably well. I give him credit because he was so terrible in Sex and the City, but he's really bringing the My Big Fat Greek Wedding charm to this great role opposite the masterful Toni Collette. By the end of the season, the show is able to take the reins off Collette and do her thing, and the result is Primal Fear-believable, and funny, too.
United States of Tara puts us in the same position as Tara's family. We're as frustrated by her changes as they are. While the different Taras - T, Alice, Gimme, and Buck - are entertaining, and sometimes empathetic in their own way, we just want the real Tara. We don't care if she's boring, we don't care if she's just a charming homemaker, or a mediocre mother. We just want Mom back.
Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here.
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