DIABLO CODY UNPLUGGED
by Daren Foster

***Hello. My name is Diablo Cody and I suffer from Multiple Career Disorder.***

OK. You’ve been a DJ, secretary, advertising proof reader, blogger, stripper, journalist, memoirist, Oscar winning screenwriter… all by the age of 30. What next? Change your name to something that sounds cool? Maybe, but you already did that, remember? How about creating a television show about a character suffering from multiple personality disorder? Steven Spielberg thinks it’s great. What do you say?

Given Diablo Cody’s (aka Brook Busey aka Brook Busey-Hunt) propensity for re-invention, it wasn’t unreasonable to think that with the Academy Award she won for Juno tucked safely under her arm, she just might head off for yet another new career. One mountain scaled, another on the horizon. What this time? Wait a minute. Take a step back. How about a mountaineer? Leery of heights? Aim a little lower. What about trying your hand at being a shepherd?

Yes, yes, yes. Of course I’m being an old fart. That should go without saying. The charms of Juno passed me by completely. They were supposed to. I was not the movie’s demographic. Not even close. However, with the United States of Tara, Cody’s now asking to sit at the grown-up’s table. The show’s main character, Tara, suffers from a mental illness, albeit a still ill-defined and much disagreed upon mental illness, which makes for even more elastic dramatic license. Still, it’s a mental illness that won Joanne Woodward an Oscar in The Three Faces of Eve and with Sybil, ridded Sally Field of her Gidget and Flying Nun baggage on the way to multiple Oscar wins. So, this is weighty stuff we’re talking about.

Hold on a second. Didn’t Juno deal with teenage pregnancy? That’s a pretty weighty subject. True. But Juno dealt with teenage pregnancy like 24 deals with the threat of a terrorist attack: without a shred of believability and the absolute maximum of artifice. I had an easier time accepting Billy Crystal being pregnant in Joan Rivers’ 1978 movie Rabbit Test than I did with the pregnancy angle in Juno.

Ditto the whole multiple personality disorder in the United States of Tara or, as they now refer to it, dissociative identity disorder. Seven episodes in and it still feels like little more than a gimmick, a series pitch that hasn’t been fleshed out past a log line. You can almost hear it. Cody walks into the room full of Showtime execs, Oscar still in her hand. “It’s like a modern day Brady Bunch where Carol is Jan, Cindy, Greg, Peter and Alice!”

Having Steven Spielberg on board couldn’t hurt getting the series up and running either. A fantasist extraordinaire, he is the perfect partner for Cody. A reviewer once referred to Spielberg as a filmmaker who likes to brush up against the darkness without getting any on himself. He merely looks like he has depth or edge without possessing a modicum of either. The same could be said of Cody or at least of her film and television work to date as there are those nude online photos from her stripper days. That should count for some personal edge.

The fact is, despite whip-smart characters all of whom possess wickedly self-aware verbal tics, Diablo Cody’s make-believe worlds overflow with cheap, easy and soft sentiment. A learned colleague of mine thought Juno was a movie in search of conflict. Think about it. Despite its potentially explosive content matter, the film refused to introduce one single character who was incensed or outraged at the prospect of a pregnant unwed teenager. Not her parents. Not her boyfriend’s mother. Not an uptight teacher at school. Not even the lone protester outside the abortion clinic where Juno goes to inquire about termination procedures. The movie’s single conflict arc is ultimately and arbitrarily placed at the centre of the prospective adoptive parents’ story Juno found through the Pennysaver magazine.

Yeah. Juno arranges to have her baby adopted by a couple she finds in a free buy and sell magazine. Wait lists? What wait lists? DC is a bit heavy-handed with the quirky factor. Not content having the dissociative identity disordered main character of United States of Tara occupy the show’s entire quirkiness factor, Cody throws in a quietly gay son who’s a whiz in the kitchen and a serious jazz and foreign film buff, and a resentful sister with a bad boob job. Everyone’s an outsider in the world according to Diablo Cody.

And no one seems all that put out by it. You know, just like real life where everyone accepts the mentally ill and wayward teenage behaviour without a shred of judgment. Choosing to go off her meds, Tara inflicts turmoil and untold social embarrassment on her family. They grumble and huff and puff but ultimately understand even though she’s made herself vulnerable to intrusions by her various outlandish alters (including a Vietnam vet named Buck -- quirky? Check!). Psychologically disturbed mom’s got to do what psychologically disturbed mom’s got to do. Her painfully understanding husband, Max, has even agreed to never have sex with Tara’s libidinous alters, T. and Alice.

Not that there’s anything wrong with all the compassion and selfless consideration. As Elvis C. wrote and sang all those decades ago, What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding? Turns out, nothing’s at all funny about it. Or particularly engaging. Maybe real life could use a whole lot more thoughtfulness, empathy and tolerance but an overabundance of those qualities in fiction makes for some weak-assed drama.

If there’s nothing much at stake -- and Tara’s illness doesn’t appear to truly threaten the fabric of her family for more than an episode -- the outcome is never really in doubt. While I fully expect some season ending cliff-hanger to rear its ugly head, any looming threat will have come too late to salvage any ongoing interest in the series. Tired as I am of the plot-point-a-minute pointlessness that drives high-octane shows like Lost and Damages, the slow revealing of nothing that occupies the core of United States of Tara provides equally tepid viewing.

If Cody would truly let her creations off the leash and give in to the notion that she’s merely spinning stories, you know for the fun and pure joy of it, she might be a much more engaging writer. She clearly has a knack for the craft. Yet she instils her tales with a portentousness that never gibes with the content. Like Juno before it, United States of Tara is a hepped-up, one line concept in a fruitlessly ongoing search for substance. Maybe if Diablo Cody tried writing something in a similar vein to the silly, simple eccentric outrageousness of her pseudonym, she might finally come up with something worth watching.