TV Watch: Newfangled ways of measuring time (1): From "Nurse Jackie" 5/1 to 5/2 (and "Mad Men" 6/2 to 6/3)

The new All Saints ER doctors: Carrie Roman (Betty Gilpin) and Ike Prentiss (Morris Chestnut)

by Ken

For any readers who noticed my recent disappearance, let me say that it: (1) was planned and (2) seems to have achieved its objectives with great success. I'm back home with a new knee that already seems to be working better than the original-equipment one, though that's not saying much.

It's an oddity of our times, though, that when the spring TV-season announcements were made, it occurred to me almost at once that I would be home for the Season 5 premiere of Nurse Jackie, and then home again in time for Episode 2 -- and ditto with Episodes 2 and 3 of Season 6 of Mad Men.

When we left Nurse Jackie, nearing the climax of what seemed to me a triumphant Season 4, I was apprehensive about the installation a showrunner of onetime Dexter showrunner Clyde Phillips. Two episodes in, I couldn't be a much happier camper.

It made excellent sense that Phillips wrote the Season 5 premiere episode himself, enabling him to make some basic changes he intended, like reinstalling director Gloria Akaliuis (Anna Deavere Smith), pharmacist Eddie (Paul Schluze), and of course Jackie herself (Edie Falco) at All Saints, moving Zoey (Merritt Wever) out of Jackie's apartment, and of course cleaning out some old characters (bye-bye, nurse Sam [Arjun Gupta] and especially Dr. O'Hara [Eve Best] and her new baby, who returned to England in Episode 1) and introducing some new ones, notably the two new ER doctors: the Landstuhl Army ER whiz Ike Prentiss (Morris Chestnut), who is sometimes taken at first glance to be a drug dealer, and slutty, self-obsessed Carrie Roman (Betty Gilpin) who lives entirely by -- and one might say for -- her looks. All sorts of possibilities seem loaded in both. Also, one notices that Dr. Cooper (Peter Facinelli), whose character had been softened in Seasons 2 and 3, seems to have been rather re-infantilized. Lovely moment when Coop is whiningly uncomprehending about being passed over once again for ER chief and Jackie looks at him and says, "Really?"

More important, Phillips seems to have confident control of this remarkable set of characters he's created, with Jackie's hard-won sobriety only depressing her further as soon-to-be ex kevin (Dominic Fumusa) pushes the end of the marriage to an especially brutal conclusion, pushing hard for sole custody of Grace (Ruby Jerins) and Fi (Mackenzie Aladjem). Of course, given the level of deception Kevin has awakened to, he has every right to an enormous well of bitterness, but the level of vindictiveness programmed in goes well beyond the best interests of the children. It's hard not to notice that Gloria is exhibiting alarmingly large memory gaps, so we can assume there are plot developements to be developed there.

I've already re-watched Episodes 1 and 2 via "On Demand," and noticed that by Monday next week's episode was available as well. That struck me as a sufficiently stark disruption of the natural order of time that I haven't been willing to go there yet. I'm not swearing, though, that I'm going to be able to hold out till Sunday, though.

Meanwhile the Mad Men season seems to me off to a more controversial but also generally satisfying start. It's looking, though, like an even grimmer season that the last couple, with the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce agency now functioning in a more or less constant state of terror (to which everyone in a position of authority contributes in his/her own way) and Don Draper himself (Jon Hamm) losing pretty much all claim to audience sympathy. It looks to be a pretty bleak journey through 1968, but done with the customary skill and precision of Matt Weiner and his team.


TOMORROW: Another on-the-tube way of measuring my particular time lapse

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Countdown to the season premieres of "The Good Wife," "Homeland," and "Dexter"

Homeland's sensational Damien Lewis

"The advantage that English people have and that I have is that we grow up with so much American television. We're all used to hearing it all the time. And the other advantage is Americans are not used to growing up with television from anywhere else or hearing any other accent, so they assume, they are much more forgiving of someone's bad accent."

-- Dominic West, The Wire's Jimmy McNulty

by Ken

Of course my pleasure in anticipating the premiere of the show in the above group I really love, The Good Wife, is tempered by the traditional CBS Sunday-night scheduling debacle, which as I suggested a few weeks ago all but dares viewers to try to watch its best show in the aftermath of NFL game pushback.

I think I've got it under control for tonight, since as of 8pm ET the schedule seems to be pushed back only a few minutes, and that's without the half-hour network-wide pushback that was supposed to be in effect at least on Sundays when CBS has a late football game, as I think it did today. I guess it's not important that I understand; it just matters that I had time to extend my scheduled Good Wife recording enough to cover the estimated overage and then some.

Of course that means I had to cancel the scheduled Homeland and reschedule that for the later broadcast. And the whole thing has left me drained before the evening even starts. It's just a lucky thing this damned football season is almost over.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, I cherish The Good Wife because it has a raft of characters -- within lawyer Alicia's family, at her law firm, and at the states attorney's office overseen by her estranged husband Peter (the one she stood loyally by when he was enmeshed in a sex scandal and forced to step down) -- I not only find believable but am able to care about, quite a lot, in fact.

I came late to the first season of Homeland, via On Demand, for which I am once again profoundly grateful. I had bad feelings about the show's terrorist-plot-or-not thriller formula, which smacked of tapping into the cheesy free-floating paranoia that seems (as best I can tell) to fuel a pile of insulting crap like 24. In fact, though, I found the show pretty involving -- quite credibly written within the credibility-stretching boundaries of its spy vs. spy format, and perhaps more importantly blessed with a terrific cast doing lots of fine, believable, involving work.

It was a stroke of genius to cast the amazing Damien Lewis in the central role of the U.S. marine who, in Season 1, might or might not have been "turned" during his long captivity by an Iraqi terrorist chief. Could any actor be more "English" than the Damien Lewis we've seen do such splendid work as his Soames Forsyte in the Forsyte Saga remake? Of course he already showed in Band of Brothers how credible he could be as a true-blue American, and as Homeland's inscrutable Brody, he has been just fantastic.

The trickle has become a flood: British actors enacting more interesting and credible American characters than an awful lot of American actors. Think of Hugh Laurie as House MD, The Wire's Dominic West and Idris Elba, Brothers & Sisters' Matthew Rhys -- all just terrific. West has some seriously interesting things to say about the success his countrymen are achieving on American TV in the BBC News Magazine interview from which I snatched the quote at the top of this post. Not just that the Brits have the obvious advantage to parsimonious U.S. producers of coming cheap, given the limited star power they bring to the negotiating table.

There's a possibility that we are possibly better in an ensemble or less geared to being a huge star or more resigned to not being a huge star. Because in America, it seems to me that everything is "you've got your one shot at the top and you've got to make it there, you've got to get there." In England, I think we're more philosophical about that because there's less chance of it here.

In The Wire, there was no star actor. It was an ensemble serving the writing and maybe in America agents have become more involved in trying to make a star in whoever was acting in it.

There's maybe a readiness to be part of an ensemble which goes slightly against the grain of how the Americans view celebrity and show business.

Interesting. Is it just a coincidence that for a serious discussion of the subject we have to turn to a British source?

I'm not going to say more about Dexter. The idea of involving myself in the doings of a conscienceless serial killer continues to surprise me, but each season I find myself watching again. Maybe it has something to do with Dexter's struggle against his sociopath's lack of normal human emotion and response, and the confusion, bordering on turmoil, he's thrown into as he begins to experience some of the above. The writers do seem to have some serious thoughts about these basic paramaters of humanity, and once again they've got a really terrific regular cast with which to explore it, and a history of bringing in terrific people for each season's weirdos and victims. I don't know that I've seen John Lithgow do anything better than his really chilling super-"straight disciplinarian" serial-killer wacko.

Boardwalk Empire seems to me off to a solid start in its third season -- a noticeably bloody one, with Bobby Canavale doing his increasingly predictably splendid character work as a terrifying thug the viewer can really believe could kill anyone he meets at any time.

As it happens, I've just been watching Cannavale's brilliant turn as Dr. Mike Cruz, the new hospital honcho in last season's Nurse Jackie episodes. Rewatching the complete season via On Demand confirmed just how splendid it was. Via On Demand I've also rewatched the first three seasons of The Sopranos (after which they stopped, alas), and am reworking my way through The Wire, with still-growing amazement and delight.

I suppose it's unrealistic to expect all TV producers to aspire to that standard. (I can't think of a broadcast network show other than The Good Wife aiming that high, but I'll certainly credit AMC's Mad Men and Breaking Bad teams with trying.) But it seems to me that it doesn't get much better than that.


AFTERTHOUGHT: I shouldn't have made it sound like a criticism, pointing out how bloody a start the new Boardwalk Empire season is off to. After all, these Prohibition-era mobsters are a ruthless, bloodthirsty lot, and if the show sugarcoated this, I hope I'd be bitching about that.

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As Season 4 of "Nurse Jackie" builds to a close, there's major news about Season 5 (including that there WILL BE a Season 5)

No, I'm sorry to say that can't have you a clip of Jackie (Edie Falco) dealing with 87-year-old Mrs. Zimberg, whom we may remember as the Popsicle Lady (Lynn Cohen).

"We are so thrilled with the series' performance this year, and we know that with the incomparable Edie Falco in front of the camera, the fifth season of Nurse Jackie will be even better."

-- Showtime's David Nevins, announcing Thursday that the show will
have a fifth season, run by former Dexter showrunner Clyde Phillips

by Ken

Why on earth would I be quoting a Showtime suit? Because I've been thrilled with Nurse Jackie's performance this year too, and how often am I on the same wavelength with a suit? Of course the "series' performance" that's thrilling Showtime entertainment president David Nevins is its ratings performance, and while I'm certainly glad to hear that the network is happy with the number of people watching, what I mean by performance is the quality of what they've been showing us these happy Sunday nights.

Which is how I happened to stumble across Thursday's announcement about the fifth season. Normally, as I've mentioned, I try to avoid "TV news," for fear of having show-beans spilled -- stuff about future show content that I would prefer to have unfold on-screen the way the creative team chooses to dish it out. But I just rewatched Sunday night's episode, "Chaud & Froid," and freaked out a bit at the promotional mention of "2 EPISODES LEFT." Just "2 EPISODES LEFT," not "2 EPISODES LEFT THIS SEASON." So when I decided it was time to write again about Nurse Jackie, I went trolling for news.

Naturally I was delighted to learn that the end is not nigh. At the same time I'm more than apprehensive about the previously announced departure, which of course I hadn't heard about, of co-creators (with Evan Dunsky) and co-showrunners Linda Wallem and Liz Brixius, who I assume have to take a large part of the credit for the show's careful nurturing over these four seasons. After all, what I had planned to write about was how much I've come to really love the show and how much this has to do with the brilliant care and feeding of the remarkable set of characters they created and have shepherded so faithfully and creatively, at the same time shepherding the sensational cast they assembled to play those characters.

Nurse Jackie co-creators and Season 1-4
co-showrunners Linda Wallem and Liz Brixius

And now Linda and Liz are gone.

There is, it seems, some geographical symmetry at work here. Nellie Andreeva writes for Deadline.com:

what was a major reason for Los Angeles-based Wallem and Brixius to depart Nurse Jackie -- the fact that it films in New York -- was key to getting Phillips on board. Like Wallem and Brixius, Phillips too left Dexter after four years of a cross-country commute between Connecticut, where he lives with his family, and Los Angeles, where the Showtime drama is shot. To be close to his family, he made working on East Coast-based shows a condition in his 2010 overall deal with Lionsgate TV, which co-produces Nurse Jackie with Showtime. Phillips will serve as an executive producer on Nurse Jackie alongside Falco, Richie Jackson and Caryn Mandabach. Production on Season 5 will begin in late 2012.

The second time I watched last week's episode's Popsicle scene, it occurred to me: How many creative teams could create a great dramatic scene out of a Popsicle? Meaning the one that Jackie offers 87-year-old ER patient Mrs. Zimberg (Lynn Cohen, frequent Law & Order judge Elizabeth Mizener -- and also Miranda's strange maid Magda on Sex and the City), for whom a tonsil biopsy has been ordered. I only just read in Wikipedia:

Soon after Nurse Jackie premiered, the New York State Nurses Association decried the unethical behavior of the title character, and the detrimental impression regarding nurses that such a portrayal could have on the public, stating, "In the first episode, Nurse Jackie is introduced as a substance abuser who trades sex with a pharmacist for prescription drugs ... She has no qualms about repeatedly violating the nursing Code of Ethics."

Oh, for goodness' sake! (This is, by the way, why I try hard to avoid reading stuff like this.) I suppose Patrolmen's Benevolent Associations across the country were heard from about The Wire, and possibly Drug Dealers' Assocations as well. The only reply I can think of is, "And could we hear from someone who isn't a moron?"

Consider too that we have witnessed the whole of the relationship between Jackie the veteran nurse (Edie Falco) and Zoey the newbie (Merritt Wever), to the point where the worshipful Zoey has wound up as Jackie's roommate in the wake of the latter's marital breakdown. Wasn't that an amazing scene when Zoey told Jackie that she, Zoey, needed to move out because Jackie was going to "like me less" for having breeched her privacy? And Jackie took the heroic (for her) step of sharing some of what was going on with her and asking her to stay? Meanwhile we've been with Zoey as she first acquired and then dumped a boyfriend, leading to her patented-Zoey project of now becoming "awesome exes" with Lenny.

We've also been drawn into the deep friendship between Jackie and Dr. Eleanor O'Hara (Eve Best), now coping with her single-mother pregnancy and finally, inevitably but touchingly, accepting -- however grudgingly -- the sincerely offered assistance of the not-entirely-buffoonish Dr. "Coop" Cooper (Peter Facinelli). It's been fascinating to experience the even starker change in perception of former hospital administrator Gloria Akulaitis (Anna Deavere Smith), nowhere more so than in last week's summary firing.

I really hate to leave anyone out, because everyone has been given the opportunity to make major contributions. For example, you're really reaping what you've sown when you can write such a tiny but wonderful scene as the one in which nurse Thor (Stephen Wallem) so painfully turned down O'Hara's request to accompany her to her sonogram, and she understood completely the priority of his precious Book of Mormon tickets. And how can I not mention Season 4 newcomer Bobby Cannavale, doing maybe the most interesting role I've seen him do, and doing it spectacularly, as the new hospital administrator, Dr. Mike Cruz, the hard-line apostle of order whose life is so filled with disorder. (In a charming Showtime extra he explains how his son Jake came to audition for the role of Cruz's son Charlie, with the senior Cannavale asking nothing more of the producers than that he be treated politely. He got the role of the addicted teen, and has been sensational.) In many hands Cruz might have been "the bad guy," but that's just too simple for the fascinatingly complex character that the writers created and that Bobby C has been acting.

Now I realize that however much credit Linda Wallem and Liz Brixius deserve, they didn't do it on their own, and indeed the Season 5 the team of exec producers will still includes Caryn Mandabach, Richie Jackson, and of course Edie Falco. I can't say that Clyde Phillips's credits inspire the ultimate degree of confidence. This terrific set of characters is being entrusted to the man behind such comedy triumphs as Parker Lewis and Suddenly Susan, and comedy-drama Get Real. Even Dexter he didn't join until midway through Season 1, and didn't become the showrunner until Season 4, his last as an executive producer. Still, it's worlds different creating a show as against carrying on a successfully created one. And

What can we do except hope for the best? I'm already thinking about the long wait, once the two remaining episodes of Series 4 have been shown, for the start of Season 5.

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I'm loving the new season of "Nurse Jackie" and rewatching "Shameless," but I've got a bad feeling about "The Borgias"

A preview of tonight's new episode of Showtime's Nurse Jackie, which airs at 10pm ET/PT

"Don't take this the wrong way, sweetheart, but you are an amazing fucking liar. World-class, genius."

-- Eddie (Paul Schulze), to Jackie (Edie Falco),
on last week's episode of Nurse Jackie

"Every now and then a child comes along who makes me believe in the existence of Satan."

-- the principal or assistant principal (depending who you believe),
about 9-year-old Carl Gallagher, in Shameless Episode 6, "Killer Carl"

"No getting around it, the Borgias are hot. They've even got their own series coming up on Showtime, debuting April 3, with Jeremy Irons playing the patriarch of the clan, that sweetheart Rodrigo Borgia, better known to us by his later professional name, Pope Alexander VI. Always ahead of his time, Will Cuppy here offers a characteristically affectionate portrait of the apple of Rodrigo's . . . er, Pope Alex's eye, his cutie pie of a daughter, Lucrezia. It's in this piece, by the way, that Will describes the Italian Renaissance as "that great flowering of this and that."

-- me, in a "Will Cuppy Tonight" post, presenting his Decline
and Fall of Practically Everybody profile of Lucrezia Borgia

by Ken

As I mentioned last night, I had planned to do this post then, before the airing of the second episode of Showtime's new "dramatic" serires The Borgias, but decided it would be more productive to hold off till I had another episode under my belt. On the whole I find my apprehensions tending to be confirmed, even though I can't say I watched the episode all that carefully. Is it possible to watch the show carefully? Despite its pretensions to be grappling with major historical and dramatic issues, it's so insubstantial, when it's not being downright silly, that it really isn't easy to focus on. I have to do some serious reckoning as to whether I want to try to watch the episode again, and then some more reckoning as to whether I want to even record another episode.

So let's talk about something else, namely the Showtime shows I like. I've been continuing to rewatch the Season 1 episodes of Shameless, and not only am I picking up all sorts of stuff that went over me the first time through, I'm appreciating the show even more -- although I have to say I'm not finding it as exhilarating as I did the first time through. Even though there is that surface crackle and pop, the realities for which all of these characters are forced to settle seem to me so monstrous that I find myself increasingly in despair for them.

The more I watch William H. Macy as pater familias Frank Gallagher, the more appalled I am -- all the highfalutin self-justifying bullshit that comes out of his mouth becomes just about unbearable. There are other factors, of course (there always are in life), but his life is what it is because he's lazy and shiftless and hasn't a clue about personal responsibility, and for all the beatings he takes (and I mean not just psychological but just plain physical beatings, which he earns regularly), he's having a way better time living life as a leech than he ought to.

And to have brought six children into the world? With a woman, poor Monica (Chloe Webb), who at least meant well and might not have been such a crap mother if she hadn't been chained to such a piece of human garbage. The older kids -- 21-year-old Fiona (Emmy Rossum), 17-year-old Lip (Jeremy Allen White), and 16-year-old Ian (Cameron Monaghan) are at least well-socialized human beings, for all the waste and destruction of their lives -- notwithstanding Fiona's complete package of brains and beauty and loyalty and compassion; or Lip's genius-level brilliance, which makes him so smart that he can't see any payoff for the path to academic legitimacy suddenly offered the the University of Chicago professor (played by that spectacular actor Dennis Boutsoukaris), who in his moonlighting job as an investigator for the Education Evaluation Service catches Lip in his SAT-taking scam; or Ian's unique brand of smarts and capacity for focus and discipline (as with his ROTC commitment).

But what about the younger kids? At one point Fiona, left with the burden of makeshift motherhood by Monica's abandonment, voices an obviously deeply felt dread that she's failed her younger siblings. Well, it's not her fault, but my goodness, what can we hope for 10-year-old Debbie, so bright and sweet and sensitive and also so whacked-out that she lives in her own world and kidnaps a two-year-old boy? (Why? Because there wasn't a girl available. So she dressed and made up the little kidnap victim as a girl.) And 9-year-old Carl? That quote from the principal (or assistant principal, as executive producer John Wells refers to him in one of Showtime's promotional videos) is no exaggeration. This poor child shows no signs of mental activity or desire that isn't directed at inflicting pain. Is it possible for a child to be beyond redemption by such a tender age? Carl makes a good case.



And all this while I'm totally grabbed by these characters, who've been created with such believability and texture and depth that I find it all but impossible not to care about them. I begin to wonder, though, whether a second season, if done as relatively honestly as the first, will be such a treat.

The level of desperation is of course much less intense in Nurse Jackie, but beyond the enormous personal appeal of Edie Falco's Jackie, these characters too have been created by the writers and actors with almost unbelievable grabbingness. Incredibly, after all of Jackie's lies seemed to blow up on her at the end of Season 2, she seems to be trying to just pick things up where they left off, though her husband, Kevin (Dominic Fumusa), remains so distrustful that he's taken over parental responsibility for their two girls' schooling.

It's been fascinating to discover in recent episodes that all the time Jackie was having her affair, or whatever it was, with Eddie the pharmacist (Paul Schulze), neither he nor anyone else at All Saints had any idea that she was married. (Wow, is that fascinating or what?) Again, it's hard to resist the appeal of the characters -- Jackie's not-really-prot&eacuteg´e Zoey (Merritt Wever); her once and no doubt future friend Dr. O'Hara (Eve Best), even hospital administrator Akalitus (Anna Deavere Smith), with her current fixation on taking advantage of the (real-world) demise of St. Vincent's Medical Center, offering the possibility of wangling its promised visit from First Lady Michelle Obama, over the wily opposition of her ruthless counterpart at Bellevue, and even not-so-lovable clod Dr. Cooper (Peter Facinelli).

As much as I'm filled with dread by the unreachable darkness of Jackie and Kevin's older daughter, I really love the show. I guess what it comes down to is that for all the characters' troubles, I really enjoy their company.

And then there's what now appears to be a program "categor": Showtime pseudohistorical drama, where character names and identities drawn from real history are set loose in a mounting potpourri of silliness. Jeremy Irons as that ultimate conniver Rodrigo Borgia, who managed to get himself elected Pope Alexander VI in the first episode, chews every rug in sight. For one episode it seemed as if there might be something going on, or worth waiting for. After a casual semi-viewing, the pattern is looking familiar. I actually made it through a whole season of Showtime's The Tudors before bailing out.

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Speaking of shows that work despite thin-sounding premises, how can you not love Nurse Jackie?

In this memorable scene, Jackie (Edie Falco) expresses her boundless admiration for the medical skills of Dr. "Call Me Coop" Cooper (Peter Facinelli).

by Ken

From the way Showtime sneaked Nurse Jackie into the schedule Monday nights at 10:30, you get the feeling the network doesn't think much of the comedy created by Liz Brixius, Evan Dunsky, and Linda Wallem, starring Edie Falco as a seen-it-all nurse surviving in an uneasy truce with the forces of chaos closing in on her both at work and at home.

It's a bad time for me, conflicting with TNT's Crossing the Bar (vastly improved over a first season so dreadful, I was startled to find that there is a second) and the Long Island PBS station's airing of reruns of MI-5 (aka Spooks in its native U.K.), only this time uncut, unlike the earlier A&E showings, which had to accommodate commercials. So the DVR has been even more indispensable than with HBO's Hung.

Jackie has what look like a standard array of sitcom accoutrements. At home she has her adorable and adoring if kind of dim husband, Kevin (Dominic Fumusa), and her two young daughters. At the hospital, she has her friendly pharmacist-and-more, Eddie (Paul Schulze), who's indispensable for the relief he provides what appears to be near-crippling back pain, as well as for certain other physical needs; her snooty doctor friend Eleanor (Eve Best), who behaves quite monstrously toward everone in Jackie's circle except Jackie herself (I'm no authority, but the very idea of a friendship-of-equals between a doctor and a nurse seems to me decidedly unusual, and intriguing); her stodgy, hovering, and distinctly strange supervisor, Mrs. Akalitis (Anna Deavere Smith); the always supportive and dependable young nurse Mo-Mo (Haaz Sleiman); and an awkward and intimidated (by everyone and everything) young trainee, Zoey (Merritt Wever), who dropped into Jackie's life in the first episode and began disrupting her routines.

Those routines are important to Jackie. She takes all the confusions and complications of her life more or less in stride, through a combination of structures in her life, those established routines, and when necessary a veteran's improvisations. Like most of us, she has made her accommodations to Life as We Know It, and to most observers probably utterly imperturbable.

Of course she's not, and sometimes one of the other characters, having failed to grasp that in her carefully laid-out life she has invisible lines it's dangerous to cross, sets off an outburst like the one we see in the above clip, prompted by the unnecessary death of a patient for whom she was powerless to get proper care. (It's for scenes like this that it's really useful to have an actress of Edie Falco's caliber rather than a network-favored "comedienne.")

For all the frustrations, improbabilities, and downright impossibilities (after all, there's an awful lot in a hospital that you can't control), she really does care about her job. As Dr. O'Hara points out, caring about patients is for nurses; she herself has no interest, except in so far as they present interesting medical challenges. (In a hilarious plot line, she found herself helpless in the face of undying gratitude from the mother and twin brother of a child whose life she saves.)

And then there are the curves thrown by life itself. Jackie and Kevin are thrown by the realization, thrust on them by their older daughter's teachers, that the otherwise confident and self-possessed Grace (Ruby Jerins) -- who's what, about 10? -- has an unremittingly bleak and terrified view of the world. Jackie has so far resisted making the obvious connection, probably because it's so scary. What may be bearable for an adult who's made her adjustments to whatever life throws her way is literally a nightmare for a child.

So far the show has been both funny, sometimes wildly so, and serious, all in all looking an awful lot like that Life as We Know It I was mentioning earlier. With really outstanding writing and acting, the show has me well hooked.

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