Pages tagged “the starter wife”

This week's episode of The Starter Wife opens with the series' newest mystery looming over Molly's well-coiffed head. We've just found out that Joan and Pappy are missing. The only clues? A charge at a Godiva store in Monte Carlo, and an ATM withdrawal.

Where the typical Starter Wife episode promises plot points in the way of public snubbings and private indisgressions, "Look Who's Stalking" is the series' most action-packed installment yet.

While last week’s episode focused on the legacy of exes in our characters’ romantic lives, this week’s Starter Wife throws the viewer abruptly back into the present. Unfortunately, Joan (everyone’s favorite curmudgeonly but kinda sexy recovering-alcoholic best friend) really has gone on a cruise with her estranged husband. So we’re left with Molly’s new writer boyfriend, Rodney’s action-hero flame, and the crumbling of Liz’s marriage.

In episode 1.05, each member of The Starter Wife's inner circle pursues a secret romance. Joan's sleeping with the lushy British actor; Rodney is jumping through hoops (actually, through windows...not to mention climbing trees) to keep his fling with the action hero under wraps. And then there's Molly, who proposes a casual sex relationship to her writing group instructor, Zach, whom we know to be engaged in more than just the one extracurricular activity.

For a period of 27 short months, TV was redeemed from all the cookie-cutter sit-coms and increasingly ridiculous reality shows that passed for network prime-time programming by the Bluth Family on Arrested Development. Since February 2005, we've had to rely on cameos from Bluths on other, less awesome TV shows (and in the case of Jeffrey Tambor's Twenty Good Years, much less awesome TV shows). Fortunately they've been many, especially lately:

So now Joan is sleeping with the actor in rehab, Molly kissed Zach the writing workshop guy and Rodney's been thrown out by his pro-athlete client/john (then wrangled back in...to the closet).

In "Remains of the Snow Day," we experience Molly's most pointed movie-montage daydream. She's faking drug addiction at a ritzy rehab center when an every-Disney-movie fantasy produces her profusely apologetic ex-husband, the dubious-but-dreamy writing group instructor in a gold cape (above), and her garland-crowned seven-year-old, proclaiming "Kids are resilient! Divorce builds character."

When The Starter Wife ran as a six-episode miniseries last year, it garnered 10 Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Miniseries, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries (Debra Messing) and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries (the delightfully wry Judy Davis). The original ran on the USA network, the home of Friday night's two-hour premiere episode of the new regular-series adaptation.