Within the first five minutes of the show Molly’s life seems to be completely fixed.  She is reinstated into all of her committees, and the UAA agency is interested in her writing.  Clearly everything is too good to be true.  As Kenny (David Alan Basche) urges Molly to do whatever the agency wants (an understandable position), Zach (Hart Bochner) warns her that it will be selling out.  Both men come off as complete jerks to me.

As usual, the more interesting story is not about Molly, but rather, her friends.  Liz (Danielle Nicolet) thinks she has caught her husband cheating when they follow him to a strange woman’s house, but it turns out to be a psychiatrist, Rodney (Chris Diamantopoulos) stands up to Felix (his closeted love interest), and Joan (Judy Davis) has an affair.

All in all it wasn’t a phenomenal episode, but not terrible either.  Molly is getting progressively less pathetic than in the first few episodes, but she is still not the engaging Molly of the Mini Series.  I believe that the next episode will be better with the return of Lou (Joe Mantegna), as he really was Molly’s prince charming.  For some reason, I find Molly’s currently love interest, Zach, extremely unlikable.  Even her ex-husband, Kenny, is a more sympatheic character.  I have my finger’s crossed for tonight’s episode.

The Starter Wife airs every Friday at 10pm on the USA Network.

The Starter Wife 1.03 – “Remains of a Snow Day”

As word gets out that Molly is the “Hollywood Ex-Wife” her life continues in a seemingly endless downward spiral.  Molly has essentially been banned from all PTA functions including Snow Day, a function she organized herself.  Didn’t Lou Manahan (Joe Mantegna) already fix this problem in the mini series?  Where is he anyway?  Molly needs some serious rescuing especially since her new love interest Zach McNeill (Hart Bochner) only seems to be leading her into more trouble.

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Along with the many other fans of the mini-series I am a bit disappointed with the start of The Starter Wife series on USA Network. I can handle the replacement of Molly’s ex-husband in the Bewitched fashion (originally Peter Jacobson, the role is now filled by David Alan Basche), but ignoring the fact that most of Molly’s friends are gone is unacceptable. I understand that actors move on and almost all of the missing characters have parts in other successful shows, but the writers needed to somehow compensate for that.

I did enjoy that the series continues to foreshadow the plot with flashes of the characters in scenes of famous movies, but Molly as the “Virgin Queen” is something no one wants to see. I was hoping that the story would pick up when it became possible that Molly might get a job as a writer while attending Zach the novelist’s party, but instead more tragedy struck Molly when her diary was stolen.

Who leaves their purse, especially one with a very private diary in it, unguarded at a party? Molly certainly should have known better. Now Molly has no job, and might lose her only new friend, Liz Marsh (Danielle Nicolet), because whoever stole Molly’s diary is publishing her private stories on the Internet, including one about Liz.

Overall, the storyline was less than engaging and Molly seems much more pathetic than she did ever before. At this point I will continue to watch in support of Debra Messing and in hopes that the show will improve.

To watch the premiere episode of The Starter Wife, click here. The show’s next new episode, “The Remains of the Snow Day”, airs tonight at 10pm on the USA Network.