Workin' Moms

After a lifetime of viewing motherhood through a sentimental lens, the gritty reality of caring for kids and holding down a job is a huge surprise to the trio of women anchoring this knowing comedy. It's clear that Workin' Moms creator Catherine Reitman has been on the business end of a breast pump before, because the absurdist situations she shows us ring true: the folly of planning date night, the agony of taking business calls while pumping on a bathroom toilet, the contemptuous glares endured by any mom seen not performing her job perfectly in public. In the show's second episode, when a cadre of moms witheringly watch her handing off her son out a car window to her nanny, Reitman takes obvious gleeful pleasure in telling them to "Eat a bag of dicks!" before driving off -- it sure feels like this is the writer/director/producer's slow-burning revenge against the real-life side-eye she's no doubt received.

There's wish fulfillment too, in a scene in which the unhappily newly pregnant Anne corrects a whining kid passing by the table where she and Kate are having lunch. "Shut it, you monster!" rants Anne. "Your mother's a goddamn angel!" There are sanctimonious Pinterest moms and frazzled moms, competitive moms and exhausted moms, moms who fail and moms who triumph, and despite the heightened sitcom aspect to some of the antics (would any mom ever go into a meeting with a new client with breast milk on her shirt?), they all feel real. It's as close to a superhero drama about moms as we're likely to get, and that sure is welcome.