Michael Sheiman

Cheaply entertaining, but IMO very narrow and stereotyped with its storyline. Billie plays the self-chosen-as Stepford wife who, of course, can not match her squeaky clean image with actions. Cooper plays the "nice guy", always trying to satisfy the wife and kids yet not holding his own life and goal and eventually explodes "nice guy" style by cheating on Billie. Brad, well, at least the guy is an honest bad boy, but many of the stereotypes of him are equally extreme as the ones portrayed by Cooper e.g. only he rides the motorcycle, only he throws her down and makes nasty comments, goes to exotic places at random, just goes for it in the tub as opposed to Cooper's "would you like to" in the shower. And then he admits he was too chicken sh...to become a real father like Cooper late in the movie. And eventually Cooper tries to peacefully hand Brad over his family and admit defeat. Geez! Real guys, fair enough, often have some "nice guy" qualities of fakeness and aiming to please, but Cooper seems in many ways so unrealistically far gone it seems to be almost comic. The ongoing theme seems to be the "male patriarchy" and that both guys are trash, but only by going round robin between the two Billie can be truly happy. Thing is, ah come on, Billie is also a complete B, ditching her own family for her desires and never really coming out to Cooper and saying, say, maybe "you need to do something for yourself and get a life beyond vying for my approval and I am 'ok' if you just pounce on me every now and then". You know, let him know he won't get friggin arrested or lose his family if he stops being a "nice guy". To me, Billie seems every but as fake as Cooper, kind of a female "nice guy", if you will, making the series feel fake and somewhat unrealistic. The series also seems to willie(or Billie?) nilly blame the patriarchy for Billie's inability to be satisfied with just one man. However, really, it struck me that all involved had their fair share of problems, including Billie's "liberated" friends who came to her asking for marriage advice because they couldn't get their own marriages to work. It's IMO one of those series you can watch a few episodes and know where it's going to go. But there's a certain refreshing quality of hearing a series just be savage about what, sadly, are fairly common views of marriage, namely this whole notion a guy can't simultaneously be a loyal father and adventurous/creative, without sugar coating it.