Three women are sitting, commenting on the changes to their own breasts after having had babies. Their analysis is pretty thorough but overall positive in nature.
Then we get the wide shot of the three women topless in a daycare setting with kids and their moms. No black bars, no pixellation. Three women with breasts and nipples and everything at 9:30 pm on a Tuesday night.
The complaint about modern Canadian comedy is that it's too light, too subtle, and not enough belly laughs. Workin' Moms flips that on its side right from the start.
Catherine Reitman, yes sister of Jason, daughter of Ivan, created Workin' Moms and is the star of the show. Reitman's character, Kate Foster, tries to keep up in the corporate world, even taking a call trying to talk over the noise from the breast-pumping machine.
Dani Kind as Anne Carlson just had a kid and is pregnant again soon after having a kid. That isn't so good for Anne since as a psychiatrist, she self-medicates. Juno Rinaldi as Frankie Coyne has post-partum depression. In the initial episode, Juno is dunking her head in the pool much to the horrified look of prospective home buyers.
Jessalyn Wanlim as Jenny Matthews seems fine on the outside. Jenny has to go back to work to support her husband chasing his scriptwriter dreams. She finds herself asking a lot of questions that lead to the question of self-discovery.
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The humour feels real. These actresses embody complex, real characters and they take chances. Even when it's a bit over the top, the humour remains.
Orphan Black fans would recognize Wanlim as the evil Evie Cho from Season 4. She is about 178 degrees away from Evie Cho on Workin' Moms. Peter Keleghan plays Foster's clueless boss.
Reitman also has a hand in writing in the show. She wrote the first 4 episodes and the final 2. Reitman based the story on things that happened to you, including post-partum depression after returning to work 10 days after birth. At the end of the second episode, Reitman's character has trouble getting her son to latch on to her breast. Turns out in that scene, she ended up using her real-life son and he latched on. So the actual emotion was completely real.
As Tom Power noted when he interviewed Reitman on Q, "there's nudity, there's swearing, there's masturbation."
'Young Drunk Punk' was more of what Canadian TV should be
We have criticized the CBC for getting rid of edgy shows such as Strange Empire and Young Drunk Punk. Though Workin' Moms is a different kind of edgy, hopefully, the CBC will give these kind of shows a bit more leeway.
Workin' Moms airs after Schitt's Creek Tuesday nights at 9:30 pm/10 pm in Newfoundland on CBC. The season finale of Workin' Moms is April 4 on CBC.
photo and video: Workin' Moms/CBC
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