Splitting Up Together

Splitting Up Together is at its best when it leaves the granular ins and outs of this arrangement for the ways Lena and Martin are dealing with not being a unit anymore.

It’s a little concerning, from a sustainability standpoint, that by episode four we’ve already witnessed one attempt to reconcile the central couple--drawing storylines from the will-they-won’t-they well so early in the show’s run seems unwise. Martin and Lena’s marriage is far less interesting than their individual struggles to figure out why it failed.

While the attention to the ongoing arc for Lena and Martin is sweet and at times heartfelt, the week-to-week comedy--which focuses on their three alliteratively named children, Mae, Mason, and Milo--falls flat.

The show is calculatedly and determinedly, not all that successfully, bending over backwards to not over-assign blame to either party and to make you think that it's sweet the way they're retroactively trying to change and become better spouses to each other in their new living situation.

As romantic comedies go, it's a perfectly durable (if familiar) concept, the problem being that while there's a movie in it, as a series, the teasing-out process feels strained after only a couple episodes.

There’s a thing called chemistry, which is little evident in the first few episodes here. Fischer and Hudson seem fine sparring, but not all that connected.

A serviceable if predictable single-camera comedy.