Over the last few years, Michaela Watkins has emerged as one of screen comedy’s more ubiquitous bit players: an excellent guest star in Curb Your Enthusiasm and Veep; a pleasant recurring player in New Girl, Married and Modern Family; and a terrific presence, too, in indie films like In a World… and Afternoon Delight. She’s an incredibly expressive actor, able to cut out niches and add some zest to whatever project she’s dropping in on. More recently, she flexed her creative muscles by creating and writing the charming USA comedy Benched – which, unfortunately, hit the air just as its network decided to get out of the half-hour business. Timing is everything – Watkins has long seemed like the actress just waiting to break out, but when would it happen? And how?
Her performance energy, unconventional as it swivels between erratic and moderated, would render her a tough fit for any television leading role of even a decade ago. But the actress, who has zipped through many of this era’s most exemplary products – chiefly, Enlightened and Transparent – has hit the timing sweet spot with Casual, the Jason Reitman-produced comedy included in Hulu’s first wave of original programming. The series runs at 10 half-hours; it’s structured and lensed cinematically, not unlike the work we’re seeing from Jill Soloway and others on competing streaming platforms, and is steeped in a naturalistic aesthetic. Despite a familiar backdrop, the series builds into something powerful and unique, too – its success rests on the back of Watkins’ quietly revelatory and multi-faceted performance.
Watkins stars as Valerie Meyers, a newly-divorced therapist who’s just moved with her daughter, Laura (Tara Lynne Barr), into her bachelor-brother Alex’s (Tommy Dewey) oversized home. She and Laura dance around that parent-friend line, their loose back-and-forths tenuously balanced by a dysfunctional dynamic. And Alex is a curious mediating factor: he recently tried to commit suicide, and he spends his days hooking up with women on the dating site he helped to create (hence the big house). He is snarky, Valerie wistful, Laura an adulthood-craving teen – Casual operates within a largely white, upper-middle-class, family-focused exterior that indicates well-trodden terrain. It doesn’t immediately pop tonally, as Transparent did, or with a sharp narrative hook.
Creator Zander Lehmann’s approach more closely recalls earlier cable half-hours like Weeds or United States of Tara – shows that, admittedly, co-invented the format now being described as “well-trodden” – in that it’s evolutionary. Like those series, Casual introduces a clear conflict and set of circumstances before delving deep, digging up with dramatic precision and comedic verve the long-buried truths and histories that continue to inform its characters’ every move. What begins as a perceptive modern dating comedy – in its first three or four episodes, Casual all but rights Reitman’s Men, Women and Children-titled wrong – evolves into a distinct meditation on monogamy, parenting and the subtleties of trauma. The season turns darker as it comes into focus, capturing a brother and sister dependently – and problematically – linked by childhood, unable to function with emotional independence.
Casual is not perfect (in the earlygoing particularly), but the way each episode draws from the last makes for rich and rewarding viewing. Alex’s storylines are initially juxtaposed with Valerie’s in a sort of “blind date of the week” structure – under the presumption that there is no “match” for his true self (because his algorithm tells him so), Alex goes for meaningless and inessential hook-ups, while Valerie experiments with all types, from older creepers to younger hunks, as she strains to embrace singledom. The season’s opening half, in that regard, plays like a well-structured if slightly out-of-pitch movie, introducing our point of reference to these characters and their relationships, and laying the groundwork for the more complex storytelling to come. Indeed, while their individual, episodic stories don’t always coalesce, they provide the foundation for the many bruises these siblings keep tucked away – and that come to, when these wounds finally reveal themselves, imbue Casual with the thematic heft and intellectual assuredness previously kept on the backburner.
The pieces begin falling into place upon the arrival of Dawn (Frances Conroy), Valerie and Alex’s flaky and spirited mother, and Emmy (Eliza Coupe, who starred in Watkins’ Benched), the first and only person to be effectively “matched” with Alex on his website. Dawn and Emmy preach similar ideas about sexuality: they openly reject monogamy, and are unable to understand why their declarations of love should be challenged on that basis. Narratively, their presence jolts. In learning of the chaotic upbringing Dawn brought upon her children – lamenting to them the social boundaries she'd felt forced to cross, or having sex with strangers in the living room – we see how Valerie’s passionless (and failed) marriage and Alex’s rejection of intimacy were both reactionary, either counters to or absorptions of the philosophies they grew up with. Even better, Lehmann writes to these themes with thrilling complexity. Through Emmy, with whom he begins an open relationship, Alex negotiates the roles of sexual and romantic intimacy in his life; through her post-divorce escapades, Valerie considers the bleakest of all questions: was her mother right all along?
It’s a conceit that effortlessly feeds into the show’s exploration of Laura. She flirts with her teacher, she’s over high-school boys, she cites Rothko and Scorsese instead of her favorite YA series – she comes equipped with the kind of aggressive wit that, if not kept in check, could come off as a little excessive. Barr’s tough and smart performance works wonders in alleviating that problem, but so does everything happening around her character: Dawn’s parental choices come to inform the way we view Valerie’s choices, since she defined her life, at least in part, by a stringent opposition to what she saw as a child. Laura tests Valerie, playing the adult field as her parent is thrust back into the perilous dating waters. Barr plays Laura with such steely confidence that when her age and level of maturity can't help but show, the effect is enormously profound. The collection of adolescent tales laid out in Casual’s early episodes evolves into an integral component of the series’ broader storytelling scope.
The actors do great work across-the-board, with Dewey peeling back Alex’s layers with great skill, Coupe sympathetically normalizing Emmy’s stigmatized lifestyle, and Conroy (and eventually Fred Melamed, as the patriarch) amping up Dawn’s oily obliviousness to fascinating levels. And yet the production begins and ends with Watkins. Casual comes to work as well as it does because of its near-belligerent humanity, its refusal to shy away from disturbing dynamics or ugly truths or complicated questions. It never sacrifices the raw for the poignant, or the dark for the funny. Reitman is, of course, a filmmaker capable of establishing such a template – and he does so here. But as Valerie, Watkins is so natural, so relatable and so utterly authentic that the castmates in her orbit appear constantly challenged to up their game – and when in her presence, they very much do. The writing, too, seems to expand and deepen with a single glance or tear or booming laugh. Watkins' tremendous work makes for one of the year’s most bare and honest performances – and that, in turn, makes for one of the year’s most surprising and potent series.
Grade: B+ to A-