A comedy about divorce may be Sarah Jessica Parker’s latest tv comeback, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Divorce, as the project is called, centers on a middle-aged woman (Parker) who, influenced by two recently single friends, impulsively brings up the idea of divorce with her husband but then can’t decide whether to actually go through with it — until her husband discovers the affair she’s been having and calls off the marriage.
Doesn’t exactly ring true, does it? Isn’t the reason comedies make us laugh is that we recognize ourselves in them, in a way that rings true but isn’t too painful, a way that gives us a chuckle? So what’s humorous about a woman who “impulsively” raises the subject of divorce with her spouse? The idea of impulsive marriage rings a bell — think Reno and Las Vegas — but impulsive divorce? Really?
Then, decision making. Do mature, centered people make major life decisions based on the influence of others? Maybe. Is that sound decision making? Maybe not. Bad choice of friends? You decide.
Calling a partner’s bluff, or confronting a partner with your discovery that he/she has done something on the scale of mischievous to damaging, is not a confrontation to which many look forward. Yet we laughed at War of the Roses and Intolerable Cruelty. Or some of us did.
A key difference between those movies and Divorce, on the one hand, and many not-so-funny real-life situations, on the other, is children. We all want the best for our kids. That is why mediation is replacing litigation as a way to get divorced. Whatever else we leave to them, our legacy to our children is the family they grow up in. As adults, many children of divorce wind up rejecting that legacy because it is too painful to bear, or dysfunctional, or otherwise not healthy to cling to as one’s heritage.
If the best course for a couple is in fact to split up, there are ways to do it that put kids in the middle and other ways that make them the focus. The difference is palpable. Wevorce founder Michelle Crosby understands this based on personal experience, and has created a way that “holds” children and makes them central to the process without involving them beyond their capabilities.
As for Divorce? Well, as they say in the biz, it’s only television.
Jane Cottrell is an entertainment lawyer and divorce mediator.
