I confess to still liking JUNO, but after sitting through one episode of Diablo Cody's Showtime comedy/drama series THE UNITED STATES OF TARA, I'm thinking that the mediocrity-and-waste-of-talent (including Toni Collette and Rosemarie DeWitt) on display will put a lot of pressure on Cody and her colleagues on the film JENNIFER'S BODY (a horror comedy with current It Girl Megan Fox) to deliver JUNO-esque box office numbers to at least commercially re-establish Cody's finger-on-the-zeigeist-pulse-plus-ornately-wacky-dialogue rep.
Here are a couple of takes on TARA; the first is SLATE.com's Troy Patterson's middling view:
http://www.slate.com/id/2208767/
And this is NEW YORKER television columnist Nancy Franklin's more upbeat take:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2009/01/19/090119crte_television_franklin
My issue with the series is that Collette is bascially being asked to impersonate Tracey Ullman in her too-broadly-played-and-defined multiple personalities. Not to forget Cody's swiping the motif of mental disorder as a form of lovable eccentricity uniformly tolerated by a whole town from LARS AND THE REAL GIRL (where Kelli Garner, as the lovelorn officemate of Ryan Gosling, handily outacted Gosling's overpraised SNL-sketch-level performance).
Starting this Sunday, viewers can judge for themselves as to whether or not TARA will be the new quirky cable comedy hit.
I'm giving it one season, possibly two. But no more than that.
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