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Stripes

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Trophy Wife
creators Emily Halpern & Sarah Haskins

It is a privilege to be able to play ten years under your actual age. As a small child, I watched every episode of Cybill from when it came on the air in 1995, and I blame it for ninety percent of my problems in general. In the titular role, Cybill Shepherd was a still luminous actress somewhat modeled along the lines of a department store Lauren Bacall. To my knowledge Cybill was the first time someone's ex-husband was ever broadcast on national television, although I would have to rewatch M.A.S.H. to be absolutely sure.

It doesn't matter how old Cybill Shepherd gets, she is a still an inspiration to millions of blondes and a living woman of provable fertility. Last year she became engaged to a Serbian psychologist, for what would be her third marriage. She was entrancing in all of her roles, but as Cybill (on Cybill) she seemed to really express herself fully, and Christine Baranski's then-refreshing brand of pseudo-upper class whoop-de-dee did not hurt the proceedings whatsoever. It basically had everything that ABC's Trophy Wife doesn't: éclat.

The Swedish born Malin Akerman dresses only in short-shorts for this role. They seem really uncomfortable and occasionally inappropriate. Once she is dressed up like Melanie Griffith and she looks a lot better:

Through some combination of blackmail, attorney client privilege and Youtubes of The West Wing, Pete Harrison (Bradley Whitford) convinced Akerman to lodge with him on a regular basis. In itself, this is no great feat, but Whitford also has two biological children and an adopted child named Bert with his second wife Jackie (Michaela Watkins).

Jackie appears at first to constitute a hippyish satire that was stale in the time of All in the Family, but she instead possesses a much more sensitive retinue of tricks. Self-employed, she spends a lot of time at her ex-husband's house; we get no sense of what her relationship or attraction with him must have been, or what circumstances might have convinced the two to adopt the child together. This general glossing over borders on immoral.

As do some of Kate's behaviors. She frequently lies to her ex-wives, especially Diane (Marcia Gay Harden). Once, she drinks a liter of vodka in front of Diane's children as a way of proving her point. Another time, she allows Bert to go an entire night without sleep, never mentioning the situation to any of her coparents. When her husband learns of these indiscretion, he instantly forgives her, as if it were simply something in her DNA that could not be corrected.

The children themselves are not very mature, so they instantly connect with their new stepmom. The only growing pains whatsoever concern Kate's stepdaughter Hillary, who was recast after the pilot because the original actress clearly had training. The new Hillary appears to be doing some sort of impersonation of Sarah Hyland at length. Her missteps are balanced by the pertinacious aplomb of her twin, Warren, who brings a host of small surprises and pleasures to what would be an otherwise dreary adolescence.

Despite the fact of there being an incredible amount of work to maintain a stable life for children in multiple households, there is nothing of that in Trophy Wife. One storyline concerned the idea that Kate had nothing to do, so her husband and his other wives began to contrive some work for her so that she might feel included. Instead she usually busies herself with her friend Meg (Natalie Morales), who destroys Kate's stepdaughter's science project and disrobes in front of other children.

Gay Harden's aspect is even more notorious. She keeps her affair with a black man quiet and its existence is barely acknowledged in the show. A successful doctor, her home environments have all the charm of a television studio, resembling Patrick Bateman's cozy hideway on the Upper West Side. Soon we may be pleased to know she has rendered an exuded corpse a living husk, for the purposes of instructing her children in some matter. Besides these flaws, she seems most loving of them all.

Naturally Cybill Shepherd portrays Akerman's mother on the show, a development as natural and expected as Patricia Heaton eventually being cast, possibly more than once, as the grandmother of Demi Lovato.

Whitford, 54, once resembled a swerving lothario so entranced by his own smells and tastes that he could barely notice anyone around him. That disappeared with the wind. As a father of three, including the mercurial and amazing Warren, he seems to always be there for his kids, although he never disciplines them in any way, leaving that unpleasant task to their mothers, not him or his wife.

He and Kate fitfully met at a club of some kind; she just plopped down into his lap. He was very excited by this, although his chin had been damaged from the falling into the lap part. He suggested that maybe they could get coffee sometime? Kate/Malin's reaction stuns me to this moment: she seemed to swallow an unsettling combination of pride, ego and arrogance in order to agree with her future husband's wishes. (She goes on to drink white wine in over 80 percent of her scenes on the show.)

We were not permitted to know the contents of this coffee-date, although presumably it went quite well. He simply revealed himself to her, in all his many foibles and responsibilities, and she leapt upon him again, this time without damage. She explained that she wanted a family, even though this is not exactly the family she imagined, they are okay-ish. Anyway, the two teenagers will be out of the house in short order, so the hard part of child-rearing was already mostly complete, and something in Kate's regard broadcasts that exit strategy in every breath.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

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