by Daniel Erenberg

Toni Collette is going to win an Emmy for her performance in the new Showtime series, The United States of Tara. After all, this is the kind of performance that the Best Actress in a Comedy Series category was built for. As Tara, a woman with split personalities, she is also required to play three “alters,” including T, a 15 year-old lolita who is besties with Tara’s teenage daughter, and Buck, a chain-smoking southern hunter. In these three characters we see her inhabit throughout the pilot episode, Collette is heartbreaking and vulnerable one moment, and tough and hilarious the next. And we believe it every step of the way. As T, the tramp, she’s downright sexy, and then later, when she’s back to being simple old Tara, she proves she can be even more sexy in a subtler manner. Toni Collette’s performance in The United States of Tara is a marvel to behold.

The show, however, while exciting and extremely promising, isn’t quite perfect. After all, Diablo Cody (and I’m so glad we’re past the brand “Former Stripper Diablo Cody”), the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Juno is still learning, but getting better all the time. Her dialogue, while still at times forced, has gotten sharper and more natural, and this is largely due to the fact that the performers on screen aren’t playing up the stylized nature of the dialogue as the cast of Juno did. They are taking the still-just-as-stylized dialogue and performing it as though real people in the real world would actually say these words. “Dude,” T tells Tara’s daughter Katie at one point. “I have been digging around in your closet for an hour and I can’t freaking get to Narnia.” On paper, this line is awful. But Collette delivers it with such offhanded conviction that you’d never give it a second thought. I even chuckled at it.

 The heart of the show is in Tara’s supportive family. After the pilot, we still don’t know how long Tara’s had these other personalities and we don’t know just why or for how long her family has been this supportive, but we are grateful for it. That aspect of the show could have been gratingly melodramatic, but instead it’s a wonderful treat. The finest scenes of the show (and there are many) are when the whole family is at home together. John Corbett, an actor who too often looks bored on screen, is rejuvenated and totally charming, fighting his attraction to the “15 year-old” T, but holding off on sleeping with her until she turns back into his wife. The kids are great too. Brie Larson is fun and engaging as Katie, and Keir Gilchrist is the finest of the batch as youngest son Marshall, who is clearly the Diablo Cody analogue of this show.

 The United States of Tara could just end up being a great show. For now, we’ll just have to settle for entrancing and addicting. And I’m just fine with that.

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Tags: Diablo Cody TV review Toni Collette Showtime
January 20, 2009 at 7:46pm ∞