Workin’ Moms latest season finally made it to Netflix in the US. Actually, I may have missed the release of season 5, because when I clicked on the “New Episodes” announcement, I found two seasons I hadn’t seen. So I spent a few days watching seasons 5 and 6 of this Canadian import. It had me laughing along with the assortment of moms and their messy family and work lives. A few spoilers are ahead for both season 5 and 6.
Workin’ Moms is a big ensemble cast with the main women characters plus all their husbands/wives/children/work mates and many others. There’s humor, emotional conflict, friendship, love, and always identity as a working woman.
The series was created by Catherine Reitman who stars as Kate. She and her husband Nathan (Philip Sternberg) get a very big surprise that changes their family dynamic a lot.
Kate starts doing business with Sloane (Enuka Okuma). Sloane becomes a regular on the series. She makes tons of money, which Kate loves. But she’s not always ethical, which troubles Kate. For example, she wants to put a scandalous photo of Anne’s daughter Alice (Sadie Munroe) on the cover of Anne’s (Dani Kind) new book.
Anne and her husband Lionel (Ryan Belleville) move out of Toronto. Anne isn’t working and she befriends some strange characters, one of whom is played by Inga Cadranel. Meanwhile, young Alice is befriending a hyper right wing anti-science teen who drives her dad to violence. The family decides they belong back in Toronto. When Anne tries to renew her psychiatric practice, her family struggles. Anne is mad as hell and must go to anger management or she won’t be allowed to practice.
When Anne comes to grips with her anger it gives Dani Kind some of her best acting opportunities I’ve seen, and I’ve seen her in several different roles. She really kills it in these moments.
Frankie (Juno Rinaldi) is in charge of her wife’s (or is it girlfriend?) infant and can’t bond with him. She gets a chance to hit it big with her real estate business and that ends in a disaster.
Jenny (Jessalyn Wanlim) is enjoying a weird, near abusive relationship with a co-worker played by Alex Mallari Jr. He’s bisexual, which confuses her. She tries to trick him into marriage.
Then there’s Val (Sarah McVie), the parenting support group leader with the horrible twins. Her advice generally involves having more sex.
Other returning characters include Rosie (Nikki Duval), Kate’s very funny scene-stealing assistant. We see brief glimpses of Alicia (Katherine Barrell) who writes a parenting book that is the opposite of Anne’s methods and becomes her rival for sales.
Each of these many characters have their own stories and their own foibles. Often the plot lines are close to real but tinged with the ridiculous. Characters are exaggerated for humor’s sake and situations are improbable but funny. The humor is often R rated and the talk is frank. It’s often laugh out loud funny and always entertaining. If you’ve never seen any of this series, Netflix has all 6 seasons available, should you decide to go for it. At about 22 minutes each, the episodes fly by quickly.
Season 6 ends with a terrible cliffhanger. There better be a season 7, because not knowing what happened is unacceptable!
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OMG i love this show. i hope there are more seasons coming after season 7 (which i’ve read is going into production next month).
Glad to find another fan!