The United States of Tara

Toni Collette in The United States of Tara

Is there anything more potentially embarrassing, off-putting, fatuous and multifariously insulting than the upcoming The United States of Tara on Showtime?

The tag line on the commercials I've heard spoken by Collette herself is:

Having multiple personalities is like hosting a kegger in your brain.

That's the best they could pull from the wreckage? This is what Diablo Cody has wrought of her Academy Award gold?

Why is the show insulting and to whom? People afflicted with dissociative identity disorder probably do not feel like they are hosting keggers--in their minds or otherwise--ever, but I can't precisely speak to that. I have not known anyone afflicted with dissociative identity disorder. I have, however, known schizophrenics with less sit-com compatible forms of the disease and they, to a person, are most assuredly not hosting frat mixers in their brains.

On a broader scale of offensiveness, why is Collete's "normal/original/baseline" persona Tara? Tara is, as described in the show's literature,

...a working mother of two who paints nursery room murals that totally rock and sometimes doesn’t feel like herself.

No, Showtime, you rock--you self-serving cable slum!

Why can't Tara's "real" personalility be the dude? That can't happen of course because no woman would ever really have a male personality? Certainly not on Showtime. Though I have etched in my mind several brilliant and enduring images to the contrary from the recently closed Catherine Opie retrospective at the Guggenheim. Her photo masterpieces of diversely gender identified individuals and families display more genuine humanity than a lifetime of Showtime.

Of course it would be even more beyond the pale for the brain trust behind the show [among them Steven Spielberg] to contemplate Collette's normal personality as being the retro mom, Alice. Alice, again from the literature,

...is the perfect homemaker who believes in good, traditional values and bakes cakes that would make Betty Crocker jealous.

It would have been completely too risque for Alice to have been her "real" personality. At least Hilary Swank made lady dudes sort of cool, but traditional homemakers?

Neither Buddy nor Alice could be real people in Showtime demographic land, they are merely funny and pathetic ciphers compared to the real women meant to watch the show [as Showtime attempts to stuff more and more working mothers of two into its dope dealing, bogus lesbian pie hole]. No doubt, however, we will come to love her inferior, loser personalities in spite of how superior we [and Tara] are to them. Yech.

Futrhermore, as a dude, I get pretty insulted by the way some women actors play men. Milton Berle had more insight into women when he played one [wigless and smoking a cigar] than Collette has into men when she plays Buck who...

...is a fan of beer and motorcycles who’s always up for a good night at he titty bar and isn’t afraid to kick some ass.

Wow! Could this project get any more nuanced?

But hey, lest the men folk become put off, The United States of Tara has shoe-horned in one more personality to appease us. Just for us emotionally stunted dudes out there forced to watch the show with our de rigueur mothers of two, they chucked in a hot teenager personality for Collette! Count me in!

Yech again.

It's a pity that Collette, who broke into film as a talented young actress playing a young woman totally against stereotype in "Muriel's Wedding," has chosen to play to and abuse so many stereotypes in what reeks of eau de talented actress vehicle.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a cake to bake.