Bru­tal hon­esty and bruised egos in HBO’s Divorce

The pilot episode of HBO’s Divorce opens to Frances (Sarah Jes­si­ca Park­er) stand­ing in front of the mir­ror, doing what many women of a cer­tain age do: crit­i­cis­ing her age­ing process, won­der­ing what­ev­er hap­pened to her smooth skin and perky boobs. It’s a per­son­al rit­u­al, one she doesn’t real­ly want an audi­ence for. When her hus­band Robert (Thomas Haden Church) enters to com­plain about equal bath­room-time rights her response is detached, unsym­pa­thet­ic and monosyllabic.

Even after he sug­gests her pro­longed-bath­room rit­u­als forced him to take a shit in a cof­fee can. He’s not loud about his annoy­ance but he’s not using his cof­fee can sto­ry to light­en the mood either. His mere pres­ence seems to suf­fo­cate her and the minute he exits the bath­room her first deep breath comes in the form of a big, fat mid­dle-fin­ger point­ed at his back. And it’s not a lazy fin­ger either – it’s ful­ly erect and strain­ing as though it’s try­ing to shoot dag­gers of hate at his back. There hon­est­ly couldn’t have been a bet­ter intro for a show titled Divorce.

The show’s cre­ator Sharon Hor­gan has nev­er been par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in writ­ing about your aver­age girl next door. Smooth run­ning rela­tion­ships in which every­thing is for­ev­er hunky-dory and mar­i­tal ​“argu­ments” con­sist­ing of pas­sive aggres­sive dabs through clenched, smil­ing teeth don’t inspire her much either. There are enough cou­ples like that on TV, and she sees no point in adding yet anoth­er to this tribe of super­fi­cial rela­tion­ships and Hall­mark-style dialogue.

There has been a strong crav­ing – espe­cial­ly from the female audi­ence – for series depict­ing relat­able char­ac­ters with warts and all. There is no such thing as a per­fect, human spec­i­men but, up until now, that’s what the TV indus­try – and Hol­ly­wood espe­cial­ly – want­ed us to believe and even strive for. In a recent inter­view with the Dai­ly Beast, Hor­gan said: ​“None of us live the Hol­ly­wood por­tray­al of a rela­tion­ship. We’re all in the trench­es just bat­tling.” And Hor­gan is on a mis­sion to let the world in on the truth.

There’s noth­ing pret­ty about real­is­ing your mar­riage has grown stag­nant, so why sug­ar-coat it? Fol­low­ing the bril­liant bath­room scene, Frances and Robert are next seen in the car en route to a friend’s birth­day bash. Robert is hap­pi­ly hum­ming along to a tune on the radio, even throw­ing in a few ques­tion­able moves as he does so. It’s a per­fect­ly inno­cent sit­u­a­tion; he’s not try­ing to tan­ta­lise his wife but he does so any­way. Her face looks fit to explode as she tries to ignore his lit­tle moment, but she bites her tongue and sim­ply turns off the radio instead. It may seem like a small thing. It’s no cause for imme­di­ate alarm and yet, at the same time, it’s every­thing that is wrong with their relationship.

In the past, these were prob­a­bly the kinds of moments they both cher­ished: those pre­cious times alone with­out the kids, a good groove on the radio and a lit­tle gig­gle over one another’s goofi­ness. But, over the years, their respec­tive quirks have turned into nui­sances and Frances is hav­ing a hard time remem­ber­ing what she once loved about them. Once you’ve got­ten to know the ins and outs of a per­son you live with on a dai­ly basis, what else is left? Dis­cussing each other’s bow­el move­ments or the irri­tat­ing chirp­ing sound of the alarm will hard­ly keep the romance going.

What Sharon high­lights per­fect­ly in Divorce is the fact that this kind of stag­nan­cy does not hap­pen overnight. ​“How do you go from eight years of a hap­py mar­riage to want­i­ng to blow someone’s head off?” It’s a qui­et, lone­ly progress that starts out with dis­sat­is­fac­tion and dis­re­gard before slow­ly mor­ph­ing into a frus­trat­ed beast of a whole oth­er cal­i­bre. It’s a numb­ing sen­sa­tion, com­pa­ra­ble to the final stages of a mourn­ing peri­od, only in the case of a nasty divorce the grief is usu­al­ly direct­ed at one’s for­mer self, not the nos­tal­gic mem­o­ries of the for­mer­ly atten­tive sig­nif­i­cant other.

Frances seems to have been unable to move on from this very stage for a long time and she has all the right excus­es as to why she nev­er took the step need­ed to bet­ter her sit­u­a­tion: the kids, her age, the love she once felt for Robert and, most impor­tant­ly to her, the fear of not being able to find any­one bet­ter – her secret affair with gra­nola-enthu­si­ast Julian (Jemaine Clement) pret­ty much proves this to be true. Her tim­ing for break­ing the silence and admit­ting to her want­i­ng a divorce couldn’t have been worse. And yet, it couldn’t have been more hon­est. Many a wife may have fan­ta­sised about doing unspeak­ably aggres­sive things to their hus­bands now and then, but when Frances wit­ness­es her friend Diane (Mol­ly Shan­non) almost turn her own dreams of blood­shed into a real­i­ty, some­thing inside Frances snaps and she realis­es: ​“I want to save my life while I still care about it.”

Mov­ing towards its third episode now the show con­tin­ues to exam­ine how the decline of a once lov­ing rela­tion­ship can turn a cou­ple on the verge of a divorce into self-pity­ing, nar­cis­sis­tic mon­sters dri­ven by their bruised egos. As is true for many sit­u­a­tions as such, it looks as though Frances and Robert’s kids will become pawns in an ugly game designed to keep their frag­ile self-esteem intact and it will be inter­est­ing to see which of the two will have the sense to be the big­ger person.