Family Values Tour: Trophy Wife
Hopefully, what we have to look forward is stuff like ABC’s Trophy Wife, which in its tone and wit reminds me of the way-underrated Suburgatory. It’s not that Trophy Wife doesn’t do a lot of the things I’ve already claimed that contemporary (and, let’s face it, traditional) family sitcoms do: it affirms family values, its central family is so white you need sunglasses to watch them, they live in a comfortable upper-middle class neighborhood, etc. Product placement abounds, from the cars to the phones to the hilarious prop that is (of all things) a water bottle.
But Trophy Wife has wit. And maybe that’s what I was getting at in the beginning of all this: our 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s sitcoms had reliable formulas that made it clear which ones were shit and which ones were great, because they were so stripped down that the jokes themselves were front and center. Trophy Wife is not a mockumentary, so none of the jokes are in the editing. The jokes are actual jokes, right there in the dialogue and the premise, and they’re good ones, too. The premise is that Kate (Malin Akerman) meets Pete (Bradley Whitford) after a meet-cute at a karaoke bar. They end up in the hospital together and fall instantly in love, but then Kate finds out he had two former families. Mercifully, the show spends almost zero time dragging this set-up out (it’s all handled in a quick flashback w/ helpful narration), so instead we can just dive right into the chaos. Kate’s both overwhelmed by the fact that she’s had to give up her party-girl lifestyle so suddenly and also a little peeved that no one takes her seriously enough to let her parent any of the eight million kids running around. The series essentially follows Kate as she tries to adjust.
Maybe that’s one thing I like about Trophy Wife: it treats family like something you have to adjust to, rather than the steady rock that everyone turns to in relief from the Big Bad World outside the home. Akerman, sounding like Cameron Diaz but with a less self-consiously goofy vibe, is a kickass choice for someone to carry the show, but even if she weren’t, the rest of the cast is great, too. Bradley Whitford is welcome to come back to TV any time, and Marcia Gaye Harden (!) plays the stone-faced, humorless former wife who has little patience for what she calls a “child bride.” (There’s also an adopted Asian kid, I guess because the series premieres after Modern Family, and they needed some crossover reference or something; long story short is that it’s the one annoying aspect of the show, this need to create a rainbow world despite the fact that white people still dominate the cast).
Even the situations—the “sit” of sitcom—are funny, and smart too. Pete’s son writes a spin-off of the Odyssey (!) in Homeric prose that devolves into a sex fantasy about his new stepmom. And Pete’s daughter sneaks vodka into school by putting it in a water bottle. When her mom is about to catch her, Kate bails her out by chugging the whole thing, making for the best second half of an episode of any comedy I’ve seen in at least a year.
I like families. I do. I like them so much that I think it’s wrong to use them, to see them only as potential consumers to whom we have to consistently proclaim, “You’re doing great! Family rules!” Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s hard. Trophy Wife gets that, or at least tries to.
About Ted McLoof
Ted McLoof is a writer at Rookerville and teaches fiction at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Gertrude, Monkeybicycle, Sonora Review, Hobart, DIAGRAM, The Associative Press, and elsewhere.He's recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. He is very cool and very handsome and he'd like to buy you a drink.