The United States of Tara - youwillnotwin

The United States of Tara premiered last night, and it’s already looking better than last season, which focused too much on Charmaine’s creepy pregnancy and poor Kate’s search for something to do. Also, while realistic, we didn’t enjoy Max and Tara’s affairs and marriage troubles. The news this year is that we are getting a new alter out of Tara, and that this one is going to be pretty evil. Awesome!

We already have an interesting new character. A professor of psychology at a college Tara is attending to finally get her degree. He’s funny, as arrogant as professors come, and it seems he is going to be a challenge in Tara’s life that doesn’t involve her horrible sister. Yeah, we are not Charmaine fans. We are not fans of Marshall’s little dye-job boyfriend either. He could do much better!

Most of the episode was normal and alter-free. A strength of this show is the way it saves the alters for dramatic moments so that we miss them. It builds suspense. Toni Collette has a gift of a role here. It would be so fun to get to play all of these people. We are particularly impressed with Buck.

We gasped aloud when Tara stabbed her wrist. We did not see that coming at all. We were so jealous of Tara when Shoshana came out to “pontificate” and help Tara with her paper. We need an alter who likes to pontificate about graduate school! Ern has a particularly nasty assignment due today and Leeard has 3 midterms over the next two days….Oh the procrastination wonders of a TV blog.

A strong start that will hopefully follow in the footsteps of season one, rather than the hot-and-cold season two.

Episode grade: B+