'Playing House': Sisterhood (and Motherhood) Is Powerful

Ken Tucker
·Critic-at-Large, Yahoo Entertainment
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The engagingly quirky comedy Playing House returns for a second season on Tuesday night with back-to-back episodes that really solidify the strengths of this buddy-sitcom. The buddies are Emma (Jessica St. Clair) and Maggie (Lennon Parham), living in small-town Connecticut with Maggie’s new baby, Charlotte. The show presents a kind of friendship rarely seen on TV — generous and goofy; intimate and, well, goofy. Parham and St. Clair created, write, and produce the show as well, and the entire enterprise looks like a spontaneous lark they just threw together — an effect that requires hard work and smart creativity to pull off.

The first episodes of Season 2 find the two pals adjusting to life with a newborn, and life after giving birth: Some of Emma’s most strenuous energy is devoted to getting single-mom Maggie back into the dating scene. These women can riff amusingly on anything, from muffin tops to the sexual allure of the Property Brothers.

The show has a terrific, deep cast of recurring characters, including Keegan-Michael Key as a cop Emma used to date, Silicon Valley’s Zach Woods as Maggie’s fussy brother, and Jane Kaczmarek as Emma’s harridan mother.

Playing House sometimes seems like an awkward fit for the USA Network. The second episode hinges on a lot of amusing blind dates Emma arranges for Maggie via Tinder — but I’m guessing USA sent them a note saying its audience might not know what Tinder is, so some funny dialogue was written to quickly explain the app. And as if to broaden its appeal to Middle America, the show tapped Darius Rucker in full guitar-strumming country mode to guest star.

All of which suggests this: Playing House is a cheerfully unhip show made by people who are very hip to the sharp edges of comedy. That’s yet another aspect of the production that I like, because it results in a pleasing tension between what Parham and St. Clair have their characters say and the sitcom situations they employ — and sabotage. This combination of qualities may consign it to cult status, but when you’re on the USA Network for any length of time, cults get pretty darn big, and I’m hoping Playing House takes up a long residence there.

Playing House airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on USA.