Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

United States of Tara: “Pilot”

As much as I love Toni Collette (the actress who plays the title character Tara) and as much as I get the appeal of a show that allows her to play more than one character, I'm still not looking forward to the actual series for which this episode was a pilot. Perhaps it's because there has been one too many series making fun of suburbia. (Doesn't anyone in TVland -- apart from the good folks of Eureka, of course -- actually live somewhere they like?) Or perhaps it's because I don't quite trust Diablo Cody -- the author of Candy Girl -- to not make this series seem like Crazy/Beautiful for mental patients (no pun intended).

On the bright side, the pilot did a good job of depicting the frustration one must feel having to live with a loved one who suffers from multiple personality disorder. The feeling that, yes, I still love this person, but geez, she does make it harder to live with her than it has to be. A feeling that reminds me a lot of the stories one of my former girlfriends once told me about how it was living with her alcoholic mother. (Not that alcoholism is synonymous with multiple personality disorder, but it does appear to produce similar emotional complications.)

Unfortunately, the pilot was not so good at depicting why one would put up with such a person. Indeed, I couldn't help losing patience with the show when it tried to present Tara's sister Charmaine as some sort of bad person just because she refuses to see Tara's disorder as just some wacky personality flaw.

I keep telling myself that Ms. Cody undoubtedly means well. But I can't help but wonder... Would I be so quick to watch this show if it was about, say, an alcoholic? And would it be receiving the same amount of critical attention? Inquiring minds want to know.

But perhaps I should wait until I see more episodes before I say more.