The United States of Tara has a few crucial issues and they could be potentially fatal.
Let's be clear. This show is NOT a sitcom, as it was first promoted by Showtime. It's a thirty minute "dramedy." That in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does represent a kind of false advertising for the program. You aren't going to find the laughs of a "How I Met Your Mother" or even "The New Adventures of Old Christine" here.
What we do have is Toni Collette in what amounts to a tour-de-force role as 4 different characters, brought on by DID: Dissociative Identity Disorder. She becomes a teenage slut, a Vietnam vet (so "he" claims), and a happy homemaker in addition to her regular self: mom to two teens, wife to a landscaper husband and sibling to a financially troubled sister.
There are several glaring issues about this situation, and I'm not even discussing the question of whether it's OK or not to use DID as the impetus for the show's action. That is a separate argument that, believe it or not, isn't related to my criticism of what's going on here.
The first issue is based on the use of drugs and alcohol. We are told that Tara was on prescription drugs to control these "alts" and had recently come off of them so she could live a more focused life. Yet she is very often drinking on the program: beer and wine are the most common choices, but even hard liquor has been seen. The use of alcohol in this situation makes me question how serious this character is about getting better. If the alts appear when she is unhappy, drinking alcohol, a known depressant, would be a huge mistake. Also, why would her therapist permit that kind of behavior?
In addition, the characters do not relate well to each other. It seems as if they each have their own agenda and have no connection to what anyone else is doing, creating logic gaps. For example, Tara's sister Charmaine is trying to sell products. One of her "team mates" hires Tara to paint a mural for her, but Charmaine spills the info about Tara's alts to this unrelated person.
Charmaine first claims that she didn't tell, but then admits to it. This upsets Tara. Why, if everyone knows about Tara's DID, does she get upset when Charmaine explained it to her client, and why did Charmaine lie to Tara about telling? Wouldn't it be one or the other? Then, after an evening of drink, (there's the alcohol) one of the alts defaces Tara's mural for the client with a horrible comment etched into the wall. What? There needs to be a certain logic within the framework of the show, some basic rules that the characters need to respond to in order for it to make sense in its own reality and I simply do not see that working here.
Also troubling is the point of this isn't clear. What are we learning (or even observing) here? To indicate Tara's "changes" they have tried an audio cue (a little tone) and even a visual cue (the image going unfocused for a moment) and that seems awkward. We see Tara suffering through the issues of what her alts do, but I don't get any sense that there is any progress.
Perhaps worst of all, the dialog seems to be uninspired. Characters say things I couldn't imagine "real" people saying in some circumstances here, and that's always a bad sign.
Originally, I gave the show a 7, based on the pilot alone. Having seen more episodes, I've lowered this to a 5 and I can say that this show is in trouble, but I believe it can be fixed.
The key is related to how the characters interact. Yes, each one of them has a list of things that they want. But to make the plots move in a logical way, they all have to interconnect. Buck buys (or rents) a bunch of porn DVDs. Where does he get the money? The alts apparently are able to use Tara's credit cards. Does this make any sense? There are several gaps of this sort within this framework of the story and they could be series killers.
My advice to Diablo Cody and Steven Spielberg: stay small, stay focused and stay logical. A series like this, with one actor playing 4 characters can get very sloppy very quickly, so everything needs to make sense. The smaller, more focused the stories are, the more genuine it's all going to seem.
Let's be clear. This show is NOT a sitcom, as it was first promoted by Showtime. It's a thirty minute "dramedy." That in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does represent a kind of false advertising for the program. You aren't going to find the laughs of a "How I Met Your Mother" or even "The New Adventures of Old Christine" here.
What we do have is Toni Collette in what amounts to a tour-de-force role as 4 different characters, brought on by DID: Dissociative Identity Disorder. She becomes a teenage slut, a Vietnam vet (so "he" claims), and a happy homemaker in addition to her regular self: mom to two teens, wife to a landscaper husband and sibling to a financially troubled sister.
There are several glaring issues about this situation, and I'm not even discussing the question of whether it's OK or not to use DID as the impetus for the show's action. That is a separate argument that, believe it or not, isn't related to my criticism of what's going on here.
The first issue is based on the use of drugs and alcohol. We are told that Tara was on prescription drugs to control these "alts" and had recently come off of them so she could live a more focused life. Yet she is very often drinking on the program: beer and wine are the most common choices, but even hard liquor has been seen. The use of alcohol in this situation makes me question how serious this character is about getting better. If the alts appear when she is unhappy, drinking alcohol, a known depressant, would be a huge mistake. Also, why would her therapist permit that kind of behavior?
In addition, the characters do not relate well to each other. It seems as if they each have their own agenda and have no connection to what anyone else is doing, creating logic gaps. For example, Tara's sister Charmaine is trying to sell products. One of her "team mates" hires Tara to paint a mural for her, but Charmaine spills the info about Tara's alts to this unrelated person.
Charmaine first claims that she didn't tell, but then admits to it. This upsets Tara. Why, if everyone knows about Tara's DID, does she get upset when Charmaine explained it to her client, and why did Charmaine lie to Tara about telling? Wouldn't it be one or the other? Then, after an evening of drink, (there's the alcohol) one of the alts defaces Tara's mural for the client with a horrible comment etched into the wall. What? There needs to be a certain logic within the framework of the show, some basic rules that the characters need to respond to in order for it to make sense in its own reality and I simply do not see that working here.
Also troubling is the point of this isn't clear. What are we learning (or even observing) here? To indicate Tara's "changes" they have tried an audio cue (a little tone) and even a visual cue (the image going unfocused for a moment) and that seems awkward. We see Tara suffering through the issues of what her alts do, but I don't get any sense that there is any progress.
Perhaps worst of all, the dialog seems to be uninspired. Characters say things I couldn't imagine "real" people saying in some circumstances here, and that's always a bad sign.
Originally, I gave the show a 7, based on the pilot alone. Having seen more episodes, I've lowered this to a 5 and I can say that this show is in trouble, but I believe it can be fixed.
The key is related to how the characters interact. Yes, each one of them has a list of things that they want. But to make the plots move in a logical way, they all have to interconnect. Buck buys (or rents) a bunch of porn DVDs. Where does he get the money? The alts apparently are able to use Tara's credit cards. Does this make any sense? There are several gaps of this sort within this framework of the story and they could be series killers.
My advice to Diablo Cody and Steven Spielberg: stay small, stay focused and stay logical. A series like this, with one actor playing 4 characters can get very sloppy very quickly, so everything needs to make sense. The smaller, more focused the stories are, the more genuine it's all going to seem.