YOU ME HER (2016–2020): Awkward but mostly endearing romantic comedy, created by John Scott Shepherd, about married Portland suburbanites Jack (Greg Poehler) and Emma (Rachel Blanchard), who are both pushing 40, trying to form a polyamorous throuple with their pansexual 20something grad student girlfriend Izzy (Prisclla Faia), whom they meet when she's working as an escort.
The first season, which is essentially all setup, is clunky and none too credible, with entirely too much self-conscious tittering, but things improve as the series begins to engage with the various complications of the characters' relationship rather than just trying to rationalize its existence. Izzy is sometimes too much of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and she's frequently only allowed to be messy in palatable ways, but her anxieties about the precariousness of her position are sympathetically handled, with amusing moral support from her scene-stealingly bitchy bestie Nina (Melanie Papalia), who derisively refers to Jack and Emma as "the Griswolds." Emma's snowballing midlife crisis is treated with some sensitivity, but Jack never really acquires a personality beyond Dorky Sitcom Husband, and by the fifth and final season, there's a mounting sense that Izzy has outgrown them both.
Ultimately, the show's biggest weakness is that both the narrative and Jack and Emma remain fixated on the idea that their blindingly white, objectively soul-crushing vision of suburban married life can somehow be adapted for LGBT and poly relationships with just a few nips and tucks, even though the story demonstrates over and over again that that will never work for Izzy unless she's willing to surrender her autonomy and individuality in the process. (At one point, they get fined by the homeowners' association because Izzy paints the front door a non-approved color!) While the finale concludes on an optimistic note, there's no reason to believe that Jack and Emma's cycle of impulsive rebellion and panicked retrenchment won't continue indefinitely because neither they nor the show's writers are willing to stretch far enough to contemplate different models of what family or committed relationships can mean beyond just a nuclear family with an extra cohabitating adult. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Yes, although the show's gay characters tend to be portrayed as mega-assholes. VERDICT: Doesn't always ring true, especially in the early episodes, but a surprisingly sincere effort was made, even if its conceptual limitations are sometimes very frustrating.
