THE SHOW:

Up front, I should say I am new to The Starter Wife. When I was assigned Season 1, I assumed that this was the start of the show and I was getting in on the ground floor. Au contraire. This is actually part two, following the successful miniseries that ran on the USA network in 2007 and led to the full series being greenlit last year. I note this because I think it is an important component of this review, as it gives me the perspective of someone joining a work already in progress. It allows me to ask and answer the question, "Can one begin with The Starter Wife - Season 1 and still get along?"

In short, yes, you can. Though, I would recommend paying special attention to the quick recap that runs before episode 1. Even with that, the season premiere will have you playing a little catch-up. By episode 2, however, you should feel fairly comfortable with all the goings on.

The show picks up in the middle of Molly Kagen (Debra Messing) continuing to adjust to life as a "Hollywood ex-wife." Formerly married to schlocky movie director Kenny Kagen (David Alan Basche, Lipstick Jungle) and having recently made her way through a couple of failed post-marriage relationships (including one with a homeless man that is referenced often as a running joke), Molly is swearing off men to focus on raising her daughter Jaden (Brielle Barbusca) and her struggling career writing children's books. To that end, she joins the writing workshop of the father of one of Jaden's classmates, a once-promising novelist named Zach (Hart Bochner, Urban Legends: Final Cut). Naturally, an attraction forms between the two, and Zach will be the one to break Molly's resolve midway through the season.

Also adding to Molly's problems is the fact that her tell-all journal has been stolen and sold to a Perez Hilton-style bottomfeeder, spreading gossip about Molly's Hollywood acquaintances far and wide. This exposes us to more of Molly's writing, which also emerges in light voiceover, and puts her on a path toward first lowest-common-denominator compromise and then the more upwardly mobile efforts of her true authorial desires. There are shades of Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City in these ambitions--in fact, like Sex, Starter Wife is based on a successful book, this time written by Gigi Levangie Grazer--though without nearly as many bad puns or the morally questionable consumerism. In fact, were one to boil this series down, it would probably be best described as Sex and the City meets The New Adventures of Old Christine. The glitz and tawdry love lives of somewhat upper-class people crossed with a newly divorced single mother trying to start a second life.

Molly's entourage, then, features an older woman, a gay man, and a newly added baseball wife. The older woman, Joan (the great Judy Davis), is a recovering alcoholic married to an even older man (Ronny Cox), and her arc for this season involves that man giving her license to have an affair because he is no longer attracted to her. Thus, between bouts of dispensing advice to her friends, Joan gets involved with a British bad-boy actor (Daniel Gerroll, Cashmere Mafia) she is helping through his own rehab. This is paralleled by the equally hazardous and also semi-secret affair that the gay best friend, Rodney (Chris Diamantopoulos, the voice of Abe Lincoln on American Dad), has with a closeted African American action star (James Black). These complicated scenarios give the group dynamic much to dish about.

Added to the mix since the miniseries is the fourth friend in the quartet, Liz Marsh (Danielle Nicolet, "Heartland"), the wife of pitcher Devon Marsh (Reggie Austin), a popular Los Angeles Dodger. Convinced that Devon is cheating, Liz's drastic pursuit of her suspicions are forcing Devon into drastic measures to stay on his game. Liz is also one of the people thrown under the bus by Molly's leaked diary.

Guest stars this season include Joe Mantegna as one of Molly's exes from the miniseries, Krista Allen (Unscripted) as one of the other school moms that Molly's diary deals dirt on, Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development's Maeby Fünke) as a young girl in rehab, and Jane Leeves as Mantegna's new fiancée with a secret. The whole of The Starter Wife - Season 1 is constructed as a single story arc chronicling the rise and fall and sometimes rise again of the various relationships and the connections between these various people. The tone is humorous, but with touches of drama and the occasional scandalous moment, with characters who actually grow and change with their increasingly complicated lives. It can be a little toothless and predictable at times, but overall, The Starter Wife is an engaging bit of light television.

The main draw for my wanting to watch The Starter Wife was Debra Messing. She is a gifted comedienne with a great sense of timing and who can handle broad comedy without losing her sense of character. To continue the comparisons to The New Adventures of Old Christine, Messing's reinvention here is not unlike that of Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Both are associated with two characters that have become larger than they are, creating a comedic persona in the old style where the performer is as easily identified with the construct that made them famous as they are for being themselves. Both Messing's Grace Adler on Will & Grace and Louis-Dreyfus' Elaine Benes on Seinfeld were fully formed career women with healthy sexual appetites and a tendency to be one of the boys, gay or straight. In their new comedies, these actresses have eased into much more calm, arguably grown-up versions of these identities. Messing appears content and at ease throughout The Starter Wife, far less high-strung but no less funny, and without losing any of her inherent likeability. There are also times where she can be disarmingly real; in particular, any time Messing shares the screen with Joe Mantegna, the distance between performer and character appears to recede. The two have an amazing chemistry that makes their scenes more natural and honest.

It's Messing's relationships with the other actors--or, probably more accurately, Molly's relationship with the other characters--that is actually the most winning aspect of The Starter Wife. The solid camaraderie and banter between her and her coffee klatch are the best scenes in the show, even more attractive than the overall plot. No surprise, when you think about it, given how much the plot can be compared to shows that have come before. It's the performers that are unique when the stories are stock. Which isn't to say that Molly's travails as a dating mother are not interesting. Messing's charm and the solid writing managed to keep me on Molly's side even as I was rolling my eyes in regards to the exaggerated and unconvincing business with Molly's ex-husband and his movie career or the journal stalking in the second half or the already overused convention of black men being on the down low. What really doesn't work for the show, surprisingly, are the much vaunted fantasy sequences. Each show begins with a take-off from a famous movie and also has some other convoluted fantasy scene later in the episode, and these are both unnecessary and overly corny. They give Messing some room to stretch and play around, but it ends up gimmicky and forced rather quickly.

Just as a I have placed The Starter Wife squarely between Sex and the City and The New Adventures of Old Christine in terms of content and intent, so too does it land in some middle-ground of quality. Neither as cloying or instantly dated as Sex and the City has proved to be, nor as intelligent or solidly crafted as Christine, it is a middle-brow show, neither clean enough for regular primetime nor salacious enough to demand it be on anything more exclusive than basic cable. It's entertaining enough to keep you watching, but not so essential you'd be that upset if your DVR managed to dump the most recent episode.

THE DVD

The Starter Wife - Season 1 spreads ten episodes across two discs. They come in a clear-plastic, standard-sized DVD case with a hinged tray to make room for both of them. The DVD also has a cardboard outer slipcover. An included paper insert advertises other TV shows.

Video:
The Starter Wife was shot for widescreen televisions and is rendered to DVD in a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer. As one should expect from a disc of a modern television program, the quality of the transfer is very good, with excellent colors and no digital hiccups. The look of the DVDs is likely as close to the original intention of the production team as possible.

Sound:
The Starter Wife receives a full-on 5.1 Dolby Digital audio mix that sounds very good. Again, given how recent the production was undertaken, there is no reason why it shouldn't. There are no surprises here, neither good nor bad.

There is Closed Captioning provided, as well.

Extras:
Outside of forced trailers for other DVD releases, the only extras are a selection of commentaries featuring Debra Messing; her love interest in the show, Hart Bochner; and writers/producers Josan McGibbon and Sara Parriott. They do full commentaries for the first and last episodes of the season, as well as a selection of the different fantasy sequences from the shows. The fantasy ones can be chosen one at a time or played all at once, and in the cases where they are fantasy sequences for episodes that already have commentary, the audio is repeated. The tracks are lively though maybe a little too self-involved, with the friendship between the participants taking center stage over engaging the audience and remembering it is supposed to be informative (in that nature, the fantasy sequences are more focused on the subject at hand, being fairly short).

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Though my cliché instinct wants me to say The Starter Wife isn't going to win any awards, it actually has been nominated for a few and Judy Davis won an Emmy for the previous miniseries, so it wouldn't actually be true. But, by just saying that, I think you know what I mean. I enjoyed watching Debra Messing in The Starter Wife - Season 1, and as far as fluff television goes, this romantic comedy of Hollywood types dating while chasing their career goals is fairly well written and full of excellent actors. It's rainy afternoon TV, killing time without killing brain cells. Recommended.

Jamie S. Rich is a novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for his collaborations with Joelle Jones, including the hardboiled crime comic book You Have Killed Me, the challenging romance 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and the 2007 prose novel Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?, for which Jones did the cover. All three were published by Oni Press. His most recent projects include the futuristic romance A Boy and a Girl with Natalie Nourigat; Archer Coe and the Thousand Natural Shocks, a loopy crime tale drawn by Dan Christensen; and the horror miniseries Madame Frankenstein, a collaboration with Megan Levens. Follow Rich's blog at Confessions123.com.