A quick review of tonight’s “United States of Tara” coming up just as soon as I find a Leif Garrett record that sounds like “War Pigs”…
“People need to know.” -Alice
I have to confess that I’m a little wiped out from one of my busier/longer 36-hour periods in recent memory to give tonight’s “Tara” the attention it would ordinarily deserve. (I’ll go more in depth with the season’s final two episodes, which I’ve seen and liked.)
But after the marital turmoil of the last few episodes, “Open House” finds Tara and Max getting along – though not so much Buck and Max(*) – and Tara seeming more likable as she gets more proactive about finding the truth about Mimi and the secret she and Charmaine share.
(*) The song played over the end of the episode was “Kiss with a Fist” by Florence and the Machine, which was already so memorably used in the Christmas episode of “Community” earlier this season.
It was nice to see Pamela Reed return as Tara and Charm’s horrific mother, and to see Alice simultaneously be a force for destruction (ruining the open house) and one for good (forcing mom to admit that she knows who Mimi was).
On the kid front, Marshall’s story (with Ted coming to his rescue even after Marshall and Lionel knocked Hanny off the wagon and out of his life) remains more compelling than Kate’s, but I did like her new boyfriend having the eureka moment about what it means for him to date a teenager. So many Kate stories involve her trying to hang in the adult world, and I welcome any acknowledgment that being an adult is just a role she’s trying on.
What did everybody else think?