Frances, played by Emmy-winning Sarah Jessica Parker ofSex and the City, is an aspiring gallery owner.
Robert, played bySidewaysOscar nominee Thomas Haden Church, is a house flipper with a questionable mustache.
They are ending their rocky 17-year union for two reasons, one wacky, one not.
Credit: Craig Blankenhorn/HBO
Watching one unhappily married friend (Molly Shannon) nearly murder her equally unhappy husband (Tracy Letts).
This is a fate Frances and Robert wish to avoid.
Robert caught Frances having an affair.
Breaking the news to the kids should be shattering.
Instead, they shrug.
Divorcerushes into tracking the fallout of its catastrophe, too.
We meet suburban Frances and Robert at peak meltdown.
The next episodes track their kiss-off.
Give Horgan points for difficulty.
How to make us invest in characters when we find them at their worst?
How to make something so sad really entertaining?
After six episodes, Im still waiting on Horgan & Co. to meet the challenge of their ambition.
The adultery angle turns Robert and Frances into two-note characters.
She wants to move on.
The actors are on different pages.
Parker plays Frances as mournful and mostly humorless.
Church plays Robert as detached and disoriented, but he goes for laughs a bit too hard.
The other adults are far more fun because theyre all caricatures of middle-aged sourness.
The result is tonal quagmire.
While watching the series, I thought a lot about my divorced friends and felt greater empathy for them.
For now,Divorcedoesnt work.
