Showtime's 'Work in Progress' Episode 1 sees suicidal Abby deal with her therapist dying mid-session
This article contains spoilers
Imagine struggling with your weight; struggling with your depression; struggling with suicidal thoughts; struggling with feeling incomplete -- “I am surrounded by people who are like full selves, and I’m like this building that’s been delayed”; imagine struggling with insufferable coworkers who make no efforts to understand all your struggles, but provide condescending and patronizing solutions. Now imagine telling all of this to your therapist, and midway realizing your therapist has died. While listening to your tale of woe.
That is Abby’s (Abby McEnany) life in the Showtime comedy ‘Work in Progress’. The self-proclaimed “fat, queer d**e” in her mid-forties has a lot to deal with. Yet, her struggles, real as they are, don’t leave you feeling sad.
In the first episode, “you killed your therapist” is a running joke; from her sister Alison’s (Karin Anglin’s) shock to her friends’ guessing that as an answer in a game of charades, to Chris (Theo Germaine), a trans man half her age who likes her, finding it interesting enough to give her a call and ask her out.
Of course, to anyone, especially someone with depressive bouts, their therapist dying mid-session would only add to their depression. In ‘Work in Progress’, however, no one lets that happen to Abby. They allow her to treat it like an absurd anecdote, one that will always work as an ice-breaker.
The most enjoyable part of episode 1, however, was Abby and Chris’ interaction with actress Julia Sweeny. Abby’s youth had been marred by Sweeny’s ‘Saturday Night Live’ character Pat -- the running gag was that no one could tell what Pat’s gender was. 25 years ago, Pat became the bane of Abby’s existence because people would call her that (because she may have resembled Pat a little bit).
Despite a thoroughly non-confrontational Abby trying to stop him, a self-proclaimed lover of confrontation Chris went up to Sweeny to mention how she and her character had destroyed Abby’s life. When Sweeny comes to apologize, Abby gets a panic attack and faints.
Abby’s woes in the show make you grin, but only because they are that real. Don’t get it wrong, ‘Work in Progress’ is a funny show, but it does not for a moment trivialize Abby’s struggles with identity and depression. Quite the contrary, it’s enormously empathetic, to the point where queer anxieties don’t appear alien to straight cis-gendered audiences; they feel perfectly normal.
'Work in Progress' airs on Sundays at 11 p.m., only on Showtime.
