The Starter Wife (2008): Review By Brian Gallagher

I’m sure many of you are surprised to find this review up from me, especially since the show doesn’t air until Friday. I was invited to the set of this new series a few months ago and I received the first two episodes to review, and review them I shall. I have to say, though, being on that set (as the only male journalist, mind you), I wasn’t sure what to make of this. I am a guy, after all, and I guess I’m not in touch with my feminine side, or some crap like that. Still, from the interviews we all gave there, I was intrigued by the side of Hollywood I hoped it would show, and I was pleasantly surprised, in most aspects.

First off, I didn’t see the original mini-series that starred Debra Messing, Judy Davis and Chris Diamantopolous and I was glad they showed this little segment that succinctly went through the events of that mini-series, since this new full series takes place right after that and we’re set up quite nicely from the get-go. Here’s the skinny. Molly Kagan (Debra Messing) was living a life of power and wealth and all that good stuff in her marriage to Hollywood big-shot movie producer, Kenny Kagan (David Alan Basche), when she finds out suddenly that he wants a divorce, which brings her to the conclusion that she was a “starter wife.” Ain’t that some sh*t? After some whirlwind adventures and stuff in the mini-series, she’s forced to make a lot of adjustments. The first place we see her is as a crossing guard at the elitist private school – forced to take a job at the school to help pay for her daughter’s tuition, since her ex-husband insists on keeping her there, to keep up images… even though he’s reportedly broke after dumping all of his money into the picture he’s trying to finish. Molly is also a published children’s author, although she wants to move into other areas of writing. That’s where Zach McNeil (Hart Bochner) and his writers workshop comes in, but there’s a whole lot more. We get the escapades of her two best friends – Rodney (Diamantopolous) a gay interior decorator who keeps falling for straight men and Joan (the incomparable Judy Davis) an ex-alcoholic who gets a job at a rehab clinic, only to have a cranky British drunk of an actor (Daniel Gerroll) and a lot of great material on what it’s really like in Hollywood.

I really have to hand it to creators Josie McGibbon and Sarah Parriott for being able to cram so much material into an hourlong comedy. We also get some great moments in this episode (and each of the remaining episodes, I was told) with these “flashback” scenes. They’re not really flashbacks in the traditional sense, but each episode will have one or two scenes with Debra Messing and whoever else is in the regular scene with her, playing out a scene from a famous Hollywood film. In this episode we get two quite humorous scenes from Elizabeth, with Messing doing her best Cate Blanchett where she decrees that she’s through with men for awhile, and another from Frankenstein, where she’s trying to inspire some life into her moping ex-husband. They really are quite fitting and inventive and every single person I talked to on the set spoke about how much fun those flashback scenes were to do… or, if they hadn’t been in one yet, how much they wanted to be in one.

This episode isn’t quite perfect, though. While the plot is quite well-written, the dialogue seems way too sitcom-ish, which is even odder since this is an hour-long series that’s mostly comedy. Perhaps they were trying to screw with conventions here, but this really is an hour-long that feels like a sitcom. That’s fine in some aspects, but McGibbon and Parriott seem to cram way too much into this pilot here, and I think certain elements could’ve been pared down and saved for later. However, like all good pilots, they give us a wonderful little twist at the end that should get you back for another go-round.

Still, Messing is just absolutely charming here as Molly Kagan and she does such a wonderful job of carrying the show that maybe my desire to see some of the lesser elements trimmed down is so I’d see more of her on-screen, although we do see plenty. The supporting cast is quite solid overall as well, and I think that Gerroll’s cantankerous British actor character and Baesche’s Kenny Kagan character are both off to intriguing starts.

Overall, I was quite pleased with the pilot for The Starter Wife. We get a great, fresh insight into the savagely hilarious world of showbusiness from many different viewpoints and a big return to TV for Debra Messing. OK, is this a show guys will religiously follow, waiting with baited breath on Friday nights? Probably not. But as a guy, particularly a guy living in Hollywood, there's plenty to like here, even though it's aimed at the opposite sex.