Pilot:
Well, this could be fun. The ceiling for Playing House seems pretty low based solely on its premise, which sees wayward best friends reunite in their hometown after the job-driven half of the pair loses said job, and the very pregnant other half kicks her cheating husband to the curb. It’s a pretty rote setup, and the weaknesses of “Pilot” usually spring from just trying to barrel through setting it up.
What Playing House does have going for it is a really terrific cast, led by Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham. I mostly know the two from their work on the podcast Comedy Bang! Bang! (which the pilot borrows some of their material from). Even in just an audio format, it’s clear that St. Clair and Parham are an amazing match for one another. There’s a really great balance the two have in just about every regard, from delivery, to physicality, to voice pitch. As such, having St. Clair’s excitable Emma move in with the drier Maggie has the basic dichotomy of personalities most comedies demand, but the two are at their best when riffing together, which is often.
That’s what I’m hoping Playing House will develop into before too long: a really great hangout show. It’s also got Keegan Michael Key of Key & Peele fame, and the scene-stealing Zach Woods from Silicon Valley, so St. Clair and Parham aren’t rolling in here without talented backup. But it’s the central friendship between Emma and Maggie, a rare thing to base a show on, rarer still if it’s female-female, that could enable the show to be a funny, empathetic treat. I chuckled a fair bit through “Pilot” (St. Clair saying “butt” is Platonic funny), but the exchange late in the episode between the leads that drives home the sometimes-unflattering depth of their friendship really sold me on the show having strong emotional potential. The episode then proceeds to oversell the moment a little bit, but that’s all part of the growing process for a freshman show.
Midseason:
Playing House is perfectly pleasant television, the kind that can get away with things that might irk me on other programs. The sets look like sets, everything is over-lit, and the characters live in palatial dollhouses despite none of them having jobs. These are the sorts of things that can make your average sitcom feel hacky when going for cheap laughs, or obnoxious when trying to maintain an air of self-importance about itself (think How I Met Your Mother’s byzantine plotting around fulfilling its title obligation).
Playing House thankfully doesn’t try to aim beyond its means, or for the cheap seats. It recognizes the storytelling limitations and strengths of being focused mainly on the friendship between Emma and Maggie. The sheer warmth and conviviality of the central duo allows the show to write around incredibly small plot stakes that nonetheless carry strong emotional ties. The fifth episode centers around Maggie trying to redeem a bungled high school passion at a reunion for her marching band, which is a goofy premise in service of showing these characters as having realistic feelings about missed opportunities and overlong regrets.
Parham and St. Clair are strongly matched foils for one another because their friendship has the spark and fuel that makes energetic conflict come easy. This isn’t a dramatic show, but it doesn’t position itself as outright airless either, and Playing House tries to treat even its most out-there characters as humanely as possible. Also helping matters is that so many of those one-shot characters are played by really talented comedic actors, including Review’s Andy Daly, Jane Kaczmarek, and the increasingly ubiquitous Jason Mantzoukas. As hoped, Playing House at its halfway point is already a pretty solid hangout show. It’s maybe not the kind that has you doubled over laughing with every episode, but it’s got a skip in its step and a thick rolodex of funny people to bring by every once in while, so it’s hard to find Playing House as anything less than amiable.