‘Significant Mother,’ notify next of kin
Expect this vile, tasteless CW comedy to flame out early and die
July 30, 2015
Every now and then, a character on a TV show says what everyone in the audience is thinking, but these lines are rarely so on-the-nose as one in The CW’s new comedy “Significant Mother.”
When one of the characters is exposed to a video he shouldn’t be seeing, he covers his eyes and asks, “Is it over?”
If he hadn’t already said it, most viewers would be asking themselves the same thing.
A high-concept but low-funny sitcom about a young man whose mother starts sleeping with his lifelong best friend, “Significant Mother” is vulgar, tasteless and strained.
The only thing that saves it from being revolting is that we don’t believe for a minute that any of the characters actually have a personal connection with any of the others.
In the premiere episode, airing next Monday, Aug. 3, at 9:30 p.m., Nate (Josh Zuckerman), a restaurateur in Portland, Ore., returns home from a business trip to catch his mother, Lydia (Krista Allen), and his friend and roommate, Jimmy (Nathaniel Buzolic), a devil-may-care bartender, in a state of post-coital undress.
Before that, Nate has picked up and admired a pair of sexy panties on the couch. After his mother enters the scene — saying, naturally, “Do we have time for one more round before Nate gets home?” — he sits on an enormous cucumber.
“Please tell me you were making a salad,” he says.
It gets worse.
As she’s getting dressed in Jimmy’s clothes — she showed up the night before wearing only lingerie and a raincoat — Jimmy tells her, “You’re an amazing mother. I should know. You practically raised me.”
The characters’ acknowledgement of the ickiness of the situation only makes it worse.
To console himself, Nate heads to a public basketball court with a bottle of whiskey. When Jimmy comes to try to reconcile, they inexplicably agree to settle it “the old-fashioned way,” over a game of “hop-and-scotch.”
This is evidently a drinking game involving hopscotch. The ensuing montage is filler.
More typical as sitcom filler is Nate’s crush on Sam (Emma Fitzpatrick), who works at his restaurant but has a boyfriend.
Nate’s father, Harrison, from whom Lydia is separated, suddenly finds her sexy again when he realizes she’s slept with someone. The show’s creators, Erin Cardillo and Richard Keith, must have realized this filler is unpromising, because Jonathan Silverman, who plays Harrison, is credited as a guest star.
The writing is self-conscious. Piling on too much information, Lydia tells Nate that Jimmy was the first man she slept with after his father, adding, “I just stamped my passport at the wrong port.”
“Really?” says Nate. “That’s the metaphor you’re going for?”
The actors’ snappy delivery of their lines is appropriate for a farce, but the show, which was developed as a digital series, undercuts them with too long takes, which are probably driven by the need to shoot quickly and cheaply.
The long takes and the slightly shaky camera work — also probably a budget-related choice — cue us to have an emotional reaction to what we’re watching, but if we react to the characters as real people, the ick factor skyrockets.
By debuting “Significant Mother” in August, The CW is signaling its low expectations for the series. It will be over soon.
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