depravity and gravity have always got a grasp on me.

Despite the fact that my three other roommates and I have less than a few bucks to expend, when it came to making the pressing decision as to how to manage our cable bill, we knew there were two highly pertinent staples we simply could not thrive without – the creature comforts of DVR and the premiere premium channel Showtime. Luckily, between bouts of Dexter, The L Word, and Californication, we were able to catch wind of the latest tour de force to grace elitist television – United States of Tara, an obscenely expertly-crafted tour through the wry, perplexing states of mind that plague a D.I.D.-stricken housewife.  The latest feat of Oscar-winner/creator Diablo Cody, this succinct twenty-five minute saga rages on like fire and fury, tugging at the heartstrings of the modern American family.  

Tara (played by the profoundly talented Toni Collette), is an artist who is slightly more than right-brained – in fact, her brain takes on a life of its own.  After facing a carefully-concealed trauma at boarding school decades ago, the mother of two teenagers and wife to the explicitly patient Max (John Corbett) began to take on a myriad of starkly-varying personas, or “alters,” which wreak havoc when stress should arise.  There’s T – a perverse, perverted teenager with a zest for trouble, Alice – a goody goody housewife straight from Levittown, and Buck – a Vietnam vet with a penchant for cigarettes and spirits.  But Tara is far from a one-woman show; the ensemble cast is compulsory for the story’s survival, and it boasts the most genuine, rollicking, and tender slew of characters any well-rounded piece could ask for. 

When the recent season finale reared its foreboding head, we sighed and sunk into ourselves, warmed by the heart and hilarity of it all, and we began to wonder just how we’d make it until 2010 without tattered Tara in our lives.  We then began to wonder what the hell we have Showtime for anymore.