Quick Before it Melts

Saturday 14 February 2009

All four one

Happy Valentine’s Day faithful blog readers!  I thought this would be a perfect day to talk to you about my latest crush.  I don’t really consider myself a big TV viewer, although once I got a DVR I found that all the really great shows I’ve heard about but never seen were much easier to view after mastering the recording schedule feature.  Now I can record multiple programs at the same time, and catch shows that never seemed to be scheduled on the same day and time.  Now, when I do sit down for an hour to just veg in front of the tube, there’s always something on that I want to see, which in turn has meant that I’m actually sitting and watching TV more than I have in about 10 years.

Of those shows, the latest to be added to my list of series recordings is United States of Tara, which debuted last month on Showtime in the U.S. and airs on The Movie Network in Canada.  Toni “The Sixth Sense/Muriel’s Wedding” Colette stars as Tara Gregson, a wife and mom with dissociative identity disorder, or more commonly referred to as multiple personalities.  She recently stopped taking her medication because, in the words of writer/developer Diablo “Juno” Cody, she “wants a chance to try living with her condition, instead of smothering it with drugs.”  All well and good, except that Tara’s husband, John (John “Northern Exposure” Corbett), daughter Kate (Brie “I’ve done a bunch of teen movies and now I have a recording contract” Larson), and son Marhsall (Keir “I’m a young British/Canadian actor!” Gilchrist) have to get used to living Tara’s “alters.”  Buck is Tara’s loud and profane male alter, who likes guns, chasing women, and calling Marshall a faggy boy; Alice is the June Cleaver-esque perfect housewife with a superiority complex over Tara and the other alters; T is the 16 year-old, pot smoking rebel of the alters, whose super-sexed, super-skanky, and super best friends with a like-minded Kate.

Sounds a bit much to keep track of?  You’re wrong:  In just the four episodes I’ve seen so far, Colette has mastered the unique personalities and mannerisms of Tara and the alters without making them caricatures of the archetypes they represent.  It is amazing to watch her performance as each alter, as her entire physical presence changes.  She’s absolutely amazing in this role.  Diablo Cody’s whip-smart dialogue is intact as well, setting United States of Tara up as one of the best written shows on TV right now.  Cody and the characters are still finding their legs, mind you, but with the news that Showtime has picked up the series for a second season, I imagine the characters will come into better focus as the plot lines are given a chance to evolve progress.

In keeping with the usual content of this blog, it’s worth noting that the opening theme song was written by Tim DeLaughter of The Polyphonic Spree.  As of yet I haven’t found a name for the song, but I’m sure before long it’ll crop on a soundtrack album, or a random blog post… like this one.

MP3: Tim DeLaughter “United States of Tara (Opening Theme)”
Trailer: United States of Tara
Facebook: United States of Tara

by J. Di Gioia | 1 Comment »

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under MP3, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.