US of Tara is one of the few shows I've watched since its inception. In its third season, it's gone from being a dark comedy to just plain dark as Tara's life unravels with the appearance of a new, destructive alter -- a personification of her abusive half-brother, Bryce. (Her other alters -- Buck, a Vietnam vet, Alice, a fifties homemaker-type, "T," a promiscuous teenager, Chicken, a five-year-old girl, Shoshana, a New York therapist, and Gimme, a sort of id creature in a red poncho who urinated freely, usually in other characters' beds -- were introduced in the first two seasons. They were annoying but never menacing.) The "quirk" factor of the first two seasons is largely gone, replaced by something more ominous and disturbing. I really like the direction in which the show has been going for the last few episodes, particularly since they were just beginning to explore how Tara's illness has impacted her family. Its biggest problem was that the show was billed as a half-hour comedy instead of an hour-long drama. There's nothing typically "comedic" about US of Tara, and I think that confused people, and limited its audience as well.
The show's creator, Diablo Cody (of Juno fame), recently talked to NYMAG.com about what she would have done differently:
I was just coming off Juno, and I think people were expecting a Juno-esque writing style in the Tara scripts, which was something I was already past, creatively. I didn’t really want to turn in eight pages of gobbledygook banter every week, but that expectation was there, so basically I was kind of a mess during the making of the first season. But I got my shit together later on and I think it shows in the episodes. I think the show gets stronger and stronger, and I’m proud of that.So United States of Tara joins the legions of critically acclaimed, yet commercially doomed television shows that lasted only a few seasons. And that's too bad, because even though it was probably doomed to run out of steam eventually, there were a lot of things about US of Tara that worked exceedingly well: namely a lead character with a mental illness that's not played for sympathy. Sometimes it's hard to see Tara beyond her alters -- and although she's at the center of them she's actually the least fleshed-out of all her personalities -- she doesn't come off as pitiable. That by itself is pretty rare in TV. Also, some of the secondary characters -- Tara's family, not her alters -- who in the first two season just seemed to orbit around Tara without narratives of their own -- have been given more airtime, some more successfully than others. I've already written about youngest son Marshall, who I think stands out among other young gay characters in that they actually allow him to be sexual. And this season the inimitable Eddie Izzard joined the cast as Tara's new psychiatrist/professor/confident.
I've read enough spoilers to stop right here (and the Onion says this season's finale, which airs in a few weeks, works as a series finale), but I guarantee there's still a lot left of Tara. I'm sorry Showtime couldn't give it one more season, but I'd rather see a good show go out on a high note.
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