Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce

It’s sad, it’s funny, and it’s surprising.

Edelstein’s pitch-perfect performance elevates Girlfriends’ Guide to one of the best new series of the season.

This one is smartly acted, crisply written and willing to address all manner of issues--marriage, betrayal, family economics, friendship, even the pitfalls of public domesticity--in gratifyingly complex ways.

You want to watch more episodes of this series not just because it’s funny, but because it understands that the emotionally complex elements of loving someone, marrying them and having kids with them are probably the reasons marriage tears two people apart over time.

It is, along with the raunch, the flinty outlook, the “War of the Roses” echoes, and the fun, also about the pull of marriage. Thanks to the aforementioned fine performances, it’s a guide that entices.

Girlfriends’ Guide is for the most part a pleasure, and unlike a lot of the network’s series, there’s nothing guilty about that.

What makes a marriage work, and what sacrifices are worth its maintenance and upkeep, are plumbed here with surprising dexterity.

Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce is a smart, solid examination of just how messy relationships are and how hard it is to make them work.

The series is fun and frothy but also often poignant.

Girlfriends’ Guide, loosely based on the series of books by Vicki Iovine, is, like most of Bravo’s shows, extremely entertaining, the TV equivalent of a great beach read.

It could easily be terrible, but the first two episodes are surprisingly entertaining, and one reason is that the show stars Lisa Edelstein and Janeane Garofalo.

Edelstein’s sympathetic performance grounds a show that often otherwise plays like young-adult fiction for actual adults. For every raw, bitter moment, there are many Hollywood caricatures and swank party scenes to make the cocktail go down easier.

Significant parts of Guide will remind you of past dramas about women in their 40s who are suddenly “out there” again. But it has its own sense of humor and hurt, all of which Edelstein conveys nicely.

Some of the randy dialogue strains a bit too hard to be provocative ("My vagina is not dead, it was just in a coma"), but what's truly shocking is how harsh and unforgiving the domestic blow-ups can be, as Abby and Jake survey the wreckage of their life together. The best parts of Divorce are those that remind us how messy and panicky such a dissolution can be for all involved.

The characters on GGTD are, for the most part, pretty smart, and their frustrations are well articulated and vivid. Divorce, I'm told, involves anger, distress, self-recrimination, and a not insignificant amount of genuine grief. That's the part the show seems to nail. Everything else, though, has been done better elsewhere.

Few divorces are pleasant, but the sharp, nasty scenes between Abby and Jake are the only emotionally honest moments over the first two episodes. Not surprisingly, they're the best ones, too. A shame the antagonists are so unlikable.

It’s a serviceable drama that’s well-calibrated to the interests of the Bravo audience but it seems unlikely to appeal beyond that particular subset of viewers.

What’s really irritating about the show is that it’s not entirely bad and you want there to be more of the good parts.

The tone changes so abruptly, what's meant to be funny comes off as bitter. [5 Dec 2015, p.65]