Alone together: Life after marriage starts with season 2 of ‘Divorce’

By Kat Mulligan TV Media

As you select the perfect invitations and the song for your first dance, or slice into that beautifully overpriced wedding cake, you’re likely not pondering the “D” word. Surrounded by love and happiness, the wedding day goes by so quickly that it can be a challenge to remember how you got there in the first place. As the years pass, it can be harder still to remember why you’ve stayed. No one likes to talk about it, but marriages do end, and seldom do things go smoothly. Perhaps this is why “Divorce,” with season 2 premiering Sunday, Jan. 14, on HBO, resonates deeply with so many of its viewers.

The series first aired on Oct. 9, 2016, and its pilot episode quickly jumped into the often hush-hush topic of divorce with a generous touch of dry humor. Frances Dufresne (Sarah Jessica Parker, “Sex and the City”) and her husband, Robert (Thomas Haden Church, “Sideways,” 2004), have spent several years together, but Frances has grown to realize that their marriage isn’t working and that she has fallen out of love with him. She wants a divorce.

What follows, after the initial shock (and vomiting), is all too relatable for those who have experienced this life-altering event. Accusations fly, discussions of affairs, both emotional and physical, abound, property is destroyed or discarded, and their children are caught somewhere in between. When mediation isn’t enough, Frances and Robert both acquire their own lawyers to ease the process, though it seems that they, along with well-meaning family and friends, further expand the divide between husband and wife, creating reluctant enemies out of once friends.

A unique trait of the series is the willingness to put divorce front and center — to have a subject often confined to whispered conversations and out of the public sphere thrust out into the open. For Parker, this was the series’ great appeal. While discussing “Divorce” during AOL’s Build Series, Parker reflected that while “there [are] lots of television shows about families and marriages” that are “very buoyant” and often “really cozy,” there was a lack of shows willing to tackle divorce. Parker was interested in portraying this other, less joyous but equally familiar aspect of modern life, as “all of us know somebody who has contemplated divorce, been divorced, survived divorce ... divorce was their undoing.”

The need to have a show that would explore this, both dramatically and with a dash of necessary wit, was key for Parker, and why she had long championed the series, working toward seeing it realized for nearly four years prior to the start of its production.

The season 1 finale of “Divorce” exemplified the pettiness that the process brings out in both parties. A decision by Frances and her lawyer, Elaine (J. Smith-Cameron, “Margaret,” 2011), to freeze Robert’s access to funds halts his ability to move forward with his own business pursuits, all while Frances celebrates the opening of her own dream: the Hudson River Contemporary Gallery. Robert makes it up to her, however, by initially agreeing to let Frances take their children — Tom (Charlie Kilgore, “Moonrise Kingdom,” 2012) and Lila (Sterling Jerins, “World War Z,” 2013) — skiing during his weekend with them, only to call the police on her, ending the potential bliss of a getaway.

It’s no surprise then that season 2 establishes that the divorce has been made legal right from the start. The trailers emphasize the possibilities that lie ahead once the legal process