Review: The Starter Wife Literary Device Takes on Television

Significant Imagery and Foreshadowing Make Television to Think About

Today I stumbled on USA Network's The Starter Wife starring Deborah Messing. With nothing better to do I settled in to watch the two-hour premier episode. I hadn't read the book or any of the recent press. From the first commercial I thought it would be Lifetime-esque but then I saw another with a child and humor. I had no idea what I was in for.

It opens with Molly woken from a dream of her and her friends as the pilgrims in The Wizard Of Oz. She rolls over in the satin sheets and answers the phone. We cut to the caller; her husband Kenny, on the treadmill downstairs telling her there is poop. She says she will take care of it and makes a call, she tells the person on the other end; "There is poop." Downstairs the maid arrives. Absolutely everything in the opening sequence sets you up for the story. The characters the friends represent in the dream are the roles they play in Molly's life. The complete and utter disconnectedness of her marriage is cleverly portrayed with the use of the ultimate connection tool, the telephone. It's no accident that Kenny is OZ in the dream.

Being a slave to her Hollywood image Molly gets up and is immediately on the scale. When it registers 117.2 she removes her wedding and engagement rings. The enormity of this gesture is played off by focusing on the size of the rings and the movement of the scale down to 117.1. In fact it is the perfect analogy; her marriage is exactly the weight she needs lose, physically insignificant yet spiritually enormous.