Classic TV: United States of Tara

The Blogger grew up in a house with several women. As is common with ethnic families, several generations of the same family lived in the same home. No one thought to move out except to get married. Consequently, the Blogger counts amongst the people who were around during his childhood two parents, two siblings, two grandparents, three aunts, the housekeeper and an assistant. Even after moving across an ocean, the Blogger still had numerous relatives come to visit for several weeks at a time, and some lived with us for several months. Space has always been at a premium. This experience is uncommon to the West and particularly absent from television. 

Showtime’s poison-tipped but strangely loving comedy United States of Tara manages to accomplish the astonishing feat of having several women live in the same home while not adding any additional bodies. Created by Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno), the series focuses on a perfect nuclear family consisting of one man, one woman, one daughter and one son.

As is evident, this is no average nuclear family. Tara (Toni Collette) has been happily married for many years but also has at least three multiple personalities that arrive unannounced at triggering events. “T” is a typical teenage girl with battitude to spare and urges her ever-patient husband Max (John Corbett, perennially playing the nice guy to colourful women) to sleep with her because “it’s still your wife’s body, she won’t mind”. “Alice” is a stereotypical 1950s housewife, replete with conservative values but with a backbone and constitution that makes Sarah Palin look like a Planned Parenthood educator. “Buck” is a trucker and a stereotypically boorish redneck. At some point in the second season, Tara reads an influential psychiatry textbook and cultivates the personality of its author, “Shoshanna”, a Jewish New York shrink fresh out of the 1970s. Later on, she resuscitates her long-repressed childhood other, “Chicken”, who is five years old.