Underbelly dancing
Watching those snarling humans, it's easy to forget how enjoyable family life can be. Sadly, it's also easy to forget this when you're about to have kids and you're filled with apprehension over what having a family will do to your identity and your social life. (Let's make it quick and painless for you: It'll destroy both.) This is where the married couple at the center of "Notes From the Underbelly" find themselves. (The second season premieres 9:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 26, on ABC.)
Like families themselves, "Notes From the Underbelly" looks big and corny and willfully dorky from the outside looking in. If you've never had a kid, jokes about breast pumps and Boppies and French baby nurses with the perfect swaddling technique all sound pedestrian, if not mildly chafing. "Who are these awful yuppies and why must we hear about their bourgeois troubles?" you might wonder, twisting your dexterous young fingers through your long, glossy hair.
And granted, the characters here, like so many on TV these days, are upper-middle-class urbanites: Lauren (Jennifer Westfeldt) and Andrew (Peter Cambor) live in a big, spotless house, they take yoga and sushi-making classes, they sip enormous cocktails and whine about stuff that's such a hassle, like breathing. Even so, "Notes From the Underbelly" does a nice job of skewering the cluelessness of first-time parents while having fun with the ever-widening culture gap between parents and nonparents.
Rachel Harris in particular is fantastic as Lauren's friend, Cooper, who becomes visibly disgusted anytime the dull concerns of child rearing enter the picture. She's the perfect foil for this show: the self-obsessed go-getter who couldn't care less about kids, who's constantly grossed out by pregnancy, parents and pretty much every single aspect of domestic life.
Peter Cambor has really grown on me as the beleaguered husband -- sure, he's got the usual TV husband's (and real-world husband's) fear of standing up to his wife's bossiness, but Cambor is a departure from the jolly, easygoing oaf you'd usually find in this role. He's a little nerdy, with pockets of unexpected neuroticism that you don't often see in male sitcom characters. In the second episode of the new season, when Cooper is telling Lauren and Andrew about trouble she's having with a co-worker, Andrew gets snagged on an unimportant detail along the way:
Cooper: She's always trying to one-up me. It's like I'm the original Terminator, and she's the more advanced model in the sequel who could turn himself into metal.
Andrew: (Thinking, in a voice-over) Don't correct her! Don't correct her!
Andrew: Actually, the T-1000 was a cyborg made of liquid metal that could assume the shape and density of solid objects.
The women react by staring blankly at him, and Andrew looks like he regrets opening his mouth. This isn't really a story line -- in a lesser sitcom, it would be. Instead, it's just a running joke, and gender-difference gags like this are sprinkled throughout each episode. Even though this kind of material has been done to death, Andrew's obsession with movie trivia is reasonably original -- OK, to be fair, it conjures up hints of Ross, David Schwimmer's character on "Friends." Even so, it's the kind of character quirk that separates an engaging sitcom character from a flat cliché.
At the end of the episode, Lauren says, "I'm so glad our will is taken care of!" and Andrew responds cheerfully, "Yeah, now we can go ahead and die without getting all stressed out about it!"
Obviously this show is aimed at the 30-something child-rearing demographic, but even if that's not you, "Notes From the Underbelly" is like having a charming but disheveled family next door, one that makes having a family seem terrifying and awful but funny -- which is closer to the truth than most of us would like.
Apocalypse wow!
Speaking of terrifying and awful but funny, now that you've soaked in the apocalyptic flavor of last week's "Weeds" finale, you can understand my confusion over where things will be headed next season. (Don't read any more if you haven't seen last week's finale yet.)
In the last episode, the dealer Nancy approached for "protection" against the biker thugs ends up torching one of the biker's pot fields, starting a massive fire that encroaches on Agrestic. Nancy has a crisis of conscience and starts to question the depravity of her life there, until she finally comes to a decision: She goes back to her neighborhood, which has been evacuated thanks to the fires, dumps a can of gasoline all over her house and lights a match, which I guess is the weak-willed woman's way of forcing herself to get the hell out of Dodge once and for all. At the very end of the episode, we hear the show's theme song, "Little Boxes," as we see flames engulfing those familiar shots of the town from the opening credits.
After watching this unexpected slaughter of the "Weeds" golden goose, I tracked down "Weeds" creator Jenji Kohan to ask her what she was thinking, and to find out whether that's the last we'll see of Agrestic.
Kohan explained that she and the other writers had been talking about what kind of a project they'd like to work on next, since they'd all agreed that they'd want to work together again whenever "Weeds" is over. Then they asked themselves, "What if our new project is 'Weeds,' but with a new feeling?'"
"To keep it interesting and fresh for the writers, we want to reinvent ourselves a bit," she said. "This gives us the opportunity to play a little next season, and maybe do a whole new show within a show."
So what's going to happen next season? Where will Nancy and her family go? Kohan said she and the other writers aren't sure what the show will look like, and since they're on strike now, they're not really thinking about it. "We never wanted to set out to do a show where you find something that works and you do it over and over again. It's a roomful of people who are hungry to progress and see what's next and see what's around the next corner," she said, adding that no one at the network objected to their decision to burn down Agrestic. "We always gear up for a fight and then we don't get it.
I had to ask about Nancy's U-Turn tattoo, which completely perplexed me. Kohan said it was "sort of an homage to her mentor," drug dealer U-Turn. "I think there was a little Stockholm syndrome going on there." Getting that tattoo was a sign that Nancy was giving in and resolving to be the best drug dealer she could be -- albeit not a very good one.
When I mentioned that Sullivan Groff (Matthew Modine) seemed to fall out of the action halfway through the season, Kohan agreed. "Honestly, we had a bigger arc. We have so many characters to service, it got pushed and pushed and pushed, and in the end we didn't have enough room. Every season you start out very ambitious, and in the end, you win some, you lose some."
Is Agrestic gone forever? "I can't say we'll never see Agrestic again," Kohan replied, and then added, almost giddily, "But we burned that motherfucker down!"
Burn, baby, burn
See how invigorating it can be, to fuck shit up? Those of us with mouths to feed and dishes to do and dogs to walk may have accepted the busy rhythms of our chaotic microcosms, but sometimes we forget the raw thrill of burning one down, whether it be a joint or a fully furnished McMansion. Oh, but I know that you haven't forgotten, because you're young and pretty and you have lots of energy and all the time in the world, and you spend it doing carefree, reckless things, like drinking enormous fruity cocktails and having hot sex with firm-bodied strangers. Well, good for you. Good for you! Now get the hell away from me.
About the writer
Heather Havrilesky is Salon's TV critic. She also maintains the rabbit blog. You can find more of her columns in the I Like To Watch directory.
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