If you caught the double-episode series premiere of truTV's excellent new comedy I'm Sorry, then you witnessed -- and presumably laughed at -- the fruits of creator and star Andrea Savage's labor, both in a work-metaphorical sense and a childbearing-metaphorical sense. As the fun and sometimes profane head of the series, Savage aimed to give audiences a refreshing update on the front-and-center TV mom., and when the Veep and Episodes co-star spoke with CinemaBlend about I'm Sorry's debut season, she explained why she inevitably had to create this role for herself.
We really tried to put out a new character, a woman who's a mom and also a wife and also in comedy, but also just a person who's nuanced. Really just a new character you haven't seen who gets to be funny. I'm not a terrible mom [as the show's Andrea] -- I'm not a perfect mom -- but I'm doing my best, and I have good relationships with people. So it's not caricature-y, and it's not the 'harried mom,' which is sort of the reason I created this in the first place was in reaction to the roles that keep coming at you. So just a funny, nuanced woman who happens to be a mom. I just don't think that you get to see that very often. That's who everyone knows. That's the people in our lives.
Exceptions can be found here, obviously, as memorable wife-moms haven't been completely absent from primetime in recent years, but as Andrea Savage implied, they're definitely not so plentiful that casting notices are overflowing with ideal character types. And I'm Sorry's Andrea isn't the most typical co-head of a family.
Fictional Andrea is, first and foremost, a confident, pointed and slightly perverted woman who, as a wife, has a real world normal relationship with Tom Everett Scott's straight man-esque Mike, who is bemused by some of her antics, and not afraid to distance himself from others. And as a mother, Andrea is as pragmatic as she is elsewhere in life, wanting to buck stereotypes for their young daughter Amelia, and realizing that kids will be kids, no matter what. Savage told me both of these elements came straight from her life, where her real husband doesn't have comedic sensibilities, and her daughter is capable of innocently humiliating her.
While speaking with Andrea Savage, I mentioned that her views on the current state of TV mom-dom meshed up pretty nicely with the upcoming revival of Roseanne, a sitcom that offered up one of the medium's most popular and relatable matriarchs. Having explained how she and her creative team also intentionally avoided going the dramatic route in displaying I'm Sorry's realism, Savage talked more about how she wanted her truTV series to be separate from similarly classified characters.
There's funny characters on TV, and women who are terrible moms or terrible wives who are just jerks. Which is funny and dark. Or it's a harried woman whose husband is another child and they don't really necessarily like each other that much anymore, but they sort of get along fine. And I wanted to show a couple that's been together for a while, who has a kid, and they still like each other and get a kick out of each other. And a mom where sometimes you do the right thing and sometimes you don't.
One other TV mom who recently took viewers by storm could be seen on FX's Better Things, as co-created by star Pamela Adlon, whose performance in Season 1 was recently nominated for an Emmy. (That show doesn't feature a functioning marriage, for comparison's sake.) Perhaps when I'm Sorry's freshman season has wrapped, Emmy voters will choose to reward another strong-willed and noteworthy mom to the mix. And if they don't, they might just get a little visit from a certain someone who sweats a lot during yoga.
I'm Sorry airs on truTV every Wednesday night at 10:00 p.m. ET. Speaking of the cable channel, check out what CinemaBlend learned about Adam Ruins Everything from creator and host Adam Conover and you're in need of more shows to watch unapologetically, look no further than our summer premiere schedule.
