In Which There Is A Secret Loathing For The One She's With

Not In Love

by ELEANOR MORROW

Divorce
creator Sharon Horgan
HBO

Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) is very upset in her marriage with Mr. Robert Big (Thomas Haden Church). She explains that when she comes home early from work and she sees Bob's car in the driveway, her heart sinks. She says that she wants to save her life while it still means something to her. The next morning Bob Big shows up in her bedroom and asks to give her an orgasm. "I'm going to lick your vagina and tongue dart your anus," he explains while she begs him to stop.

Subsequently, Mr. Big suggests counseling. "We've been to counseling," Carrie explains. She no longer does very much writing, although she still asks rhetorical questions out loud and never receives an answer. Carrie now has a twelve year-old daughter who she rags on a lot about brushing her teeth, and a teenaged son who takes the school bus, I guess because they don't want him driving a car. Carrie used to love New York City but now she only sees it from the distance.

In a bit of shock, it turns out that Carrie wants to be in a love relationship with Julian (Jemaine Clement) who makes the most phenomenal granola. He orders a pizza for her. Sure, he seems little unconventional, but he is able to bring her to orgasm. When she tells him that she is getting a divorce, he says he is surprised. "You have kids," he says. "I still have kids," she responds. "We can't even watch TV together because he repeats the jokes right after he hears them." He loses his appetite for the pizza shortly thereafter.

It seems like even after matrimony, Carrie's relationships with men are still basically surface-level. She has many of the economic goals she wanted to reach when she was a hot single in Manhattan, but she is still unhappy. "When did it start to go off the tracks in your mind?" he asks. Given a lack of other options, she has sex with her husband one last time. He is on top, kissing her forehead.

When Carrie's friend Samantha finally tried to pursue a committed, monogamous relationship, it unraveled apart rather quickly. She tried to give him a three-way for his birthday, and she became really jealous that he looked so good for an older man. He ended up cheating on her and she forgave him, a couple times I think. She seems to have learned nothing from this.

When Mr. Big finds out about his wife's affair, he locks his wife out of their house. It's neat how Horgan begins her story in the deep of winter, making Long Island feel like a real place at times. Haden Church is a pretty ugly villain as Mr. Big, but you can totally believe that he would become a paunchy suburban father with no discernible personality of his own.

Parker herself looks almost exactly like she did so many years ago. Her haircut is a lot better, and she is a lot more believable when it comes to being a vulnerable woman in late middle age. Her sweaters look so soft, and while Divorce tries to tell us that she is really an unhappy person, we get the opposite impression from her general mien and how she carries herself. She rarely fidgets or sighs, she just is.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording.

In Which We Analyze What Has Become A Cold Sore

For Shame

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Catastrophe
creators Sharon Horgan & Rob Delaney

Rob Delaney is a recovering alcoholic who lives in London with his wife Sharon (Sharon Horgan) and their two kids, Frankie and Miren. He sees his wife drinking when they are at dinner, when he comes home from work at a pharmaceutical company, when they are out at parties. He thinks about maybe drinking at some point down the road, when his children are grown up, and he can employ a bodyguard and a driver to protect him from exactly how inebriated he wishes to be.

He works in a cubicle across from an attractive woman who flirts with him constantly, both of the desire to tweak his modest, sober nature, and possibly because she harbors a genuine attraction for a man ten years her senior. He finds himself masturbating in the company bathroom in the new season of the BBC series Catastrophe, which he recognizes as both an important necessity and an all-time low. What working woman doesn't want to stroll up to her cubicle mate and utter those fateful words: "Can I suck your cock?"

Things are clearly very different in England. They once had a female prime minister, but now they just have an American expat who is forced to marry the mother of his son. He pretends to love her, of course, but there is the creeping feeling on Catastrophe that maybe they aren't all that suited to each other. Sharon and Rob fight a lot: sometimes it is the sort of play-fighting that many couples use as a transition to sex and intimacy, but other times the debates are reflective of a deeper resentment.

The subject that Rob and Sharon fight about most often is sex. This is exacerbated by the stress of Sharon's latest pregnancy, but it is a difficulty that haunted their partnership before they were even married. The two were brought together by a rampant, exhausting physical chemistry: Sharon was obviously attracted to the massive amount of hair featured on Rob's body, and Rob likewise by the possibility of a human woman finding that appealing.

Their close friends have reached no better acclimation with their lives as they approach true middle age. Close friends Chris and Fiona stopped having sex and decided to get a divorce, with the husband hiding under the covers. Sex is not only the foundation of every single relationship on Catastrophe, is it something like a canary in coal mine.

Alcohol has a varying effect on human sexual performance. It can loosen the inhibitions of a shy or modest individual, causing greater pleasure. Drinking also has the possibility of dimming the penis' primary function. Deprived of the possibility of inebriation, Rob always seems overly pent-up, and as the co-writer of Catastrophe, he does little to mitigate the idea that his straight self might not entirely be his best self — and he constantly apologizing to Sharon and the world for that.

This second season of Catastrophe is even darker than the first. Sometimes Rob and Sharon come to a grudging happiness at the end of their trials, but most often the results are far sadder. In one scene, Sharon and Rob run into a couple at the movies who have actively defriended Sharon. Rob calls the woman "a cold sore," and Sharon is immensely pleased by this. They have passed on some aspect of their unhappiness to others, and lightened the load.

What is finally so unrealistic about the laugh-out-loud hysterics of Catastrophe's situations is that Sharon and Rob seem to exist in a world that is completely without empathy. They have no ability to feel for others, and ask nothing of the other people in their lives, even those that they depend on. This is a harrowing way to live, but there is a disturbing element of truth in it. Like that woman said of Kramer's painting, "He's a disgusting, offensive brute, but I can't look away."

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

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In Which Sharon Horgan Seduces An American Man

Laying On Its Side

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Catastrophe
creators Sharon Horgan & Rob Delaney

Carrie Fisher is almost unrecognizable in the new BBC sitcom Catastrophe. She appears with her dog on the phone with her son Rob Norris (Rob Delaney), advising him not to marry the British woman he has accidentally impregnated.

Accidentally may be a strong word. There must be a subconscious reason that Rob doesn't use a condom when he has sex with Sharon Morris (Sharon Delaney). Instead of encouraging her to abort the pregnancy, he decides to move to London. We get a sense of the city on Catastrophe. It is a friendly and unfriendly place for an American, and we can see why Rob would not want to live there. He suggests they move to Boston, where his job is, and Sharon laughs in his face.

Horgan is a beautiful and subtle Irish comedian, and she is far and away the star of Catastrophe. "I want to be a choice," she tells her sudden love interest, and it is attractive in a pathetic kind of way. Sharon's brusque personality has, in the past, made her hard to love by anyone except her elementary school students. In the show's only predictable scene, her pregnancy causes her to vomit in front of her pledges, but for the most part descriptions of her gas are relegated to accentuating the couple's sex life.

Horgan is stunning, but Catastrophe works so well because of its surrounding cast. Fisher is brilliant feuding with Horgan as Rob's mawm Mia, and Ashley Jensen plays her friend Fran with an unearthly aplomb. The show's best character is Fran's husband Chris (Mark Bonnar), whose love for his wife is almost but never transcended by his irresistible style.

With such terrible role models, it is a surprise that against the advice of all the people in their life, Horgan and Delaney plan to turn a weeklong hookup into a marriage and a family.

Rob Delaney, a long-time standup, writes Catastrophe with Horgan, and his own battle with alcoholism is the subtle backdrop of the show's story. Delaney is still finding his way as a believable actor, but his timing with Horgan is already great, and the bristly former party animal he plays feels fresh and new as a character.

Delaney uses his brow and mouth to accentuate most of his jokes, which is a little broad for this style of comedy, but his ministrations are so likable the hammy stuff kind of works. During a conference call with his old advertising partners where he has to crouch in the bathroom for privacy, accentuating how much larger he is than virtually everything in England.

Everything on Catastrophe comes from the mind of Horgan and Delaney, and you can tell immediately that this project is not the work of a room of writers. The dilemmas of Catastrophe are completely believable. Nothing is sugarcoated, whether it be Horgan's pregnancy or Delaney's shitbrain friends. When Horgan goes to meet up with an old boyfriend the show even becomes painful and disturbing, without losing any of its signature voice.

Catastrophe allows us to see couples in relationships as they really are, and not as a glamored over loyalty like that of a dog that you see on other comedies. This simple but completely original honesty makes Catastrophe the best comedy on television. (Amazon will be bringing over the BBC show to America this spring.) At a time when everyone else is making jokes about our last differences, Horgan and Delaney have revealed at length that we are all the same, and miserable.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

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