Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Divorce’

Sarah Jessica Parker has returned home to HBO, the place that made her famous all those years ago with Sex and the City. This time, however, she’s ditched the City in favor of living out her days in suburbia, cheating on her mustachioed contractor husband Robert (Thomas Haden Church), and evidently filing for Divorce. We watched the pilot and we’re here to let you know if you should stay committed to SJP or acknowledge your irreconcilable differences. 

A Guide to Our Rating System

Opening Shot: The opening of a pilot can set a mood for the entire show (think Six Feet Under); thus, we examine the first shot of each pilot.
The Gist: The “who, what, where, when, why?” of the pilot.
Our Take: What did we think? Are we desperate for more or desperate to get that hour back?
Sex and Skin: That’s all you care about anyway, right? We let you know how quickly the show gets down and dirty.
Parting Shot: Where does the pilot leave us? Hanging off a cliff, or running for the hills?
Sleeper Star: Basically, someone in the cast who is not the top-billed star who shows great promise.
Most Pilot-y Line: Pilots have a lot of work to do: world building, character establishing, and stakes raising. Sometimes that results in some pretty clunky dialogue.
Our Call: We’ll let you know if you should, ahem, Stream It or Skip It.

DIVORCE

Opening Shot: Frances (Parker), freshly showered, inspects her features in the mirror until her husband Robert (Church) approaches her and petitions for equal bathroom time.

The Gist: Frances and Robert are a middle-aged couple living in snowy suburbia with their children. Their marriage is clearly lackluster, demonstrated from the moment we’re introduced to them. After their friend Diane (Molly Shannon) drunkenly points a gun at her husband at her birthday party and indirectly causes him to have a heart attack, Frances evaluates the stage of their marriage and realizes how unhappy she is. She tells Robert she wants a divorce, but things go awry when she realizes that she can’t run off to the man she was having an affair with. She apologizes to Robert, but much to her surprise, he catches on to the affair quickly, and kicks her out, promising to make her life miserable and their children hate her.

Our Take: While we question the sustainability of a show like this —it would probably make more sense as a mini-series— the pilot actually surprised us. Parker and Church’s chemistry is a unique one, and it makes the show worth watching. It’s also a surprise to find that Parker is the adulterous wrongdoer in this marriage, charming and likable as she is in the role of Frances. Her performance isn’t anything special or different from what she’s done before, but it gets the job done.

There are some really stellar comedic moments sprinkled throughout the episode, as well: Robert vomiting after Frances tells him she wants a divorce is unexpected and cringeworthy, and the explanation to the police officer that he’s sick because he ate too much fondue (and some cake) makes it even funnier. Church is really the heart of this show; between his very, very literal explanations for everything (“I went to a strip club. Where there were strippers. Who were stripping. And they became nude…”) and attempts to salvage their relationship via the gift of orgasm, it’s certainly easy to understand why Frances finds Robert so irritating. With Church’s performance, however, it’s hard not to let those sad eyes and mustache pull at your heartstrings. The pilot leaves a lot of room for character development ahead; we’ve yet to see how the divorce will affect their children, and how it will cause Robert and Frances to change – or remain the same.

Sex and Skin: Robert attempts to engage in oral sex with Frances the morning after she tells him she wants a divorce, but she rejects him. Frances also later has hot morning sex with her side-man Julian (an unexpectedly perfectly cast and hilarious Jemaine Clement). Robert later does get to sleep with Frances after she apologizes, but Frances clearly is not excited by it.

Parting Shot: Having just been busted for having an affair and locked out of the house by Robert, Frances stands outside in the snow, seemingly unsure of what’s ahead.

Sleeper Star: Talia Balsam’s performance as Frances’ bitter friend Dallas is one of the more grounding and intriguing of the cast. She’s widowed and recently divorced as well, so she’s navigated the waters that Frances is now entering – not to mention her ex’s new fling is pregnant. Balsam’s subdued, sassy delivery of her biting dialogue is a breath of fresh air among a lot of the more loaded scenes, and her cynicism provides some necessary comic relief.

Most Pilot-y Line: “How do you go from eight years of a happy marriage to wanting to blow someone’s head off? What if the same thing happens to us?” Frances’ remarks after Diane is escorted from her party by the police fit the scene and leads into an interesting exchange, but it initially feels slightly forced and like a blatant metaphor for what’s ahead.

Our Call: Stream it. While Parker doesn’t deliver anything particularly remarkable here and some of the cast is pretty grating, Church shines here and makes it worth watching. He’s endearing, sad mustache, fondue vomit and all, and he definitely charges the show forward. There’s strength in the show’s subtleties, and while there are certainly flaws, it’s the little moments that make Divorce special.

[Stream the pilot for Divorce on HBOGo or HBONow.]

Jade Budowski is an indecisive sometimes-writer with a knack for ruining punchlines and harboring dad-aged celebrity crushes. Follow her on Twitter: @jadebudowski.