L’CHAIM –

Jan. 20, 2022 – Just as many people, if not more, are headed in the opposite direction of willful sobriety, a product of pandemic exhaustion and depression. You know, those ongoing concerns we met in early 2020 with joking/not joking about day-drinking.

Series creator Simone Finch recently explained in a Television Critics Association press conference that the seeds for this show began germinating in 2012, before she got sober. So if this story about substance abuse recovery derived from her own life feels relatable to folks living out the definition of surge depletion that is coincidental.

Samantha is messy when we meet her, which coincides with the final inebriated moments before she’s fired from her media site job. One court mandated month in rehab later, she’s moved back to Boston with her self-absorbed mother Carol (Ally Sheedy) whose main concerns as she picks up her daughter from rehab are a) not being late for her spiritual book club meeting, and b) how much Samantha talked about her in therapy.

Carol is a classic undermining parent, smiling brightly while nitpicking her child’s efforts to apply concealer to her zits, and Sheedy plays her like a length of barbed wire brought to life. Her comic chemistry with Black-D’Elia keeps the show flowing with black humor.

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