Going solo

Inspired by her Sundance-award-winning 2015 short film of the same name, Frankie Shaw’s SMILF is a comedy-drama about the life of single mother Bridgette (Shaw), as she struggles to successfully balance raising her son, stunted romantic relationships, family life and finding work as an actress. SMILF also stars Miguel Gomez as the father of Bridgette’s son, and Rosie O’Donnell as her erratic mother.

This kind of comedy, which reminded me a lot of One Mississippi (see my piece for Season 2 here), is where the character’s life is not funny at all but actually just really sad. But with some good writing and acting, there are some amusing moments. For the most part though, SMILF leans heavily on the drama side of things, but despite this I found the first episode pretty entertaining.

I appreciated the blunt approach the show seems to be taking in order to fully illustrate what life is really like for Bridgette. Her house is a mess, she binges on junk and gets on people’s nerves. There’s a lot of nudity, even in just this first episode, and no, not in a way that the audience is supposed to see as sexy or even funny: just people being naked in an ordinary and truthful way.

Story-wise, this episode was all introductions. It’s not surprising that we don’t have much of an indication as to where Bridgette’s story is headed, but for now, SMILF has offered enough that I want to find out.

Matty Reeves

Matty has always loved all kinds of TV shows, but formally began her binge-watching “career” while pretending to read books throughout university. She enjoys arguing with friends (and strangers) about quality programming.