Pop Culture
The Mysteries Of Laura Is Horrible And Hacky, But Still Kinda Nails Motherhood
It’s not so much that NBC’s new working mom/cop dramedy The Mysteries of Laura is terrible as it is hellishly boring. It’s an hour of Debra Messing making flustered facial expressions while wearing sweat pants, and it’s hard to stay focused on a storyline that has the energy and excitement of a snail taking a dump. Reviewers tore Mysteries 1000 new a-holes; Vulture went so far as to title their review: “The Mysteries of Laura Is a Bad Show. It’s a Bad, Bad Show.” So you get what we’re working with here.
The first thing we learn about Laura, an NYPD detective, is that she drives a Volvo station wagon with a siren on top. The front seat is filled with crushed Goldfish crackers and sippy cups, and it’s a cliched and groan-worthy introduction to the main character. And yet, a tiny voice in my head spoke up. “That looks like YOUR car,” it said.
And it did. Like, exactly.
The show is an hour of goofy mom moments intermixed with a dull mystery that Laura eventually solves, since that’s the title of the show and all. It is so incredibly dumb that the only thing worth mentioning is that it’s a murder mystery that goes down in the real upper-middle class suburb of Westchester, which – in TV New York – is filled with Downton Abbey style mansions. Unlike many other scripted women Laura is actually good at her job, and Messing is still able to show off her comedic chops despite working with medicore material. Thus these stupidly cliched Mom-ents, while still dumb, were often funny and human.
- Laura shoots a criminal who’s got a gun to another man’s head, and and then gingerly wipes the blood off the hostage’s face with a tissue.
- Laura pulls an old sandwich from under a newspaper, sniffs it, and eats it!
- Laura’s messy desk at work is covered in succulents because she’s most likely a Basic with a Pinterest account and a dream of a more serene life.
- Laura tells her boss her nighttime plans are: “Laundry, bath, martini.” Sounds nice.
- Laura is angry her estranged husband brought home Nerf guns for her sons even though she’s a cop with a gun because: Motherhood!
- There is a cake eating scene. SHE LOVES CAKE because: Woman!
- Laura makes a stress-eating joke!
- Laura jokes about the selection at Target. She shops at Target!
- She calls her husband before an important preschool interview wearing Spanx shorts, strapless bra and Uggs.
- Laura gives her horrible rambunctious kids cough medicine to calm them down for said interview. They fall asleep, waking only to barf on her mid-interview and shoot the school headmistress with the aforementioned Nerf gun.
