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'I'm Sorry' is the best show you've probably never seen

This story was originally published on May 23, 2020. In the time since, season three was canceled mid-production, but the show is still available on Netflix. Andrea Savage's next project will be the forthcoming SF-set cartoon "The Freak Brothers."

I hate almost all sitcom depictions of wives and, yes, moms.

For most of my TV-watching years, female portrayals of "wife" and "mom" have been about as far removed as you can get from actual wives and moms. There's the nagging wife, the "helicopter parent mom", the woman obsessed with pregnancy/kids (to the detriment of everything else in her life), or the high-strung type who keeps her husband's balls in her purse ... and then makes him hold that purse for her at the mall. For all intents and purposes in the sitcom world, once you're no longer a single, f-able woman, you're shipped off to a cliched island where only humorless wives and moms exist.

So imagine my surprise when I watched the first episodes of truTV's "I'm Sorry," helmed by comedian/actress/writer Andrea Savage (of "Veep" and "Stepbrothers"). "I'm Sorry" follows Andrea Warren - who Savage, as co-creator, has deemed "an exaggerated version" of herself - a TV writer balancing a raunchy comedy circuit filled with dirtbag friends, while navigating the "responsible" side that includes her role as a mom to a preschool-aged daughter and her role as a wife.

The show's title comes from the phrase that Andrea uses most often in the show. She has a lot to apologize for, like when she follows two parents' comments that a little boy is a "flirt" by joking that a little girl will grow up to be ... let's just say the word rhymes with "blocktease." It's not crassness to be crass, but meant to play off gender roles. As you might expect, it is not well received.

Scott Everett White

If you haven't heard of "I'm Sorry" before, you're not alone. The show premiered in 2017 on (perhaps) the unlikeliest of TV networks, truTV, known mostly only to diehard basketball fans looking for the NCAA tournament and former fans of the channel's previous iteration, "Court TV."  Despite the show's inexplicable existence as one of truTV's few scripted TV shows, the comedy is now getting a second life on Netflix, where Seasons 1 and 2 are currently streaming.

"It was night and day," Savage has said of the attention the show has received on the streaming platform. "I mean, we had great, die-hard fans from the beginning and it was very well-received. But it was truTV and everyone was like, 'Do I get truTV?' I promise you do, it's the most basic of basic cables, but I didn't even know what truTV was before. And then suddenly, it went on Netflix and then just exploded overnight."

On the show, Andrea tries to figure out how her crude humor exists within stereotypical parental constraints. Despite not being a parent myself, the way that "I'm Sorry" plays out is understandable to anyone who's ever held in an inappropriate comment, something Savage is seemingly incapable of doing. It's like watching a female-led "Curb Your Enthusiasm"-style car crash, with a dash of "Always Sunny" high jinks.

Erica Parise/TruTV

Take for instance, the early Season 1 episode "Racist Daughter." In it, Andrea and her husband Mike (played with comedic aplomb by Tom Everett Scott), are forced to deal with their 4-year-old Amelia's sudden, racist comments about a classmate with whom she has a playdate. "I don't like the color of her skin," she states with all the matter-of-factness a preschooler can muster at the family dinner table, the bombshell landing just as well as one might expect — with appropriate shock and horror from her parents.

As Andrea and Mike attempt to backpedal Amelia's racism, Andrea brings the problem to her comedy partner, Kyle (played by the wonderful Jason Mantzoukas), and he reacts with offbeat humor. Naming Henry Ford, Walt Disney and Paula Deen as "successful racists" — "Your list of racists isn't helping," Andrea declares, before pausing and adding: "You also forgot Mel Gibson" — with Kyle "reassuring" the distraught Andrea that Amelia's budding racism is "not gonna preclude her from achieving all of her dreams and goals," he notes. "You've got Halloween covered, forever," he adds, unhelpfully. "It's just hoods!"

Scott Everett White

Part of the magic that exists within "I'm Sorry" is its inherent belief that you can be parents, but yet still be your real, immature selves just dealing with the pressures of life. Rarely have I seen a woman portrayed in a way closely resembling what I wanted to see for myself, should I become either of those roles. As far as I could tell, for a long time, there were no true-to-me depictions of what a married woman is — or can be — with women instead serving to punch up the jokes of a male star.  On this show, Andrea gets to crack lewd jokes and still be a responsible mom at the same time; this is a new way of depicting the post-single, family life for women. And Savage gets that.

"I get a lot of responses where people are like, 'I watch your show ["I'm Sorry"] and it makes me not scared to grow up. It looks like you can still have fun. It looks like you can be a grown-up, and still be dirty and weird and funny and sexual.' And I really took that to heart," Savage said on the podcast, "The Last Laugh." "I was scared to grow up. A lot of people are. But you don't have to change. I have a lot of friends who are like me and everyone who watches my show are still cool, normal people."

And it's not just me that has noticed the lack of realistic, funny mother roles. Savage has previously noted that she has looked for roles that fit her sensibilities as a comedian and mom, telling NPR, "The harried mom role, or the awful mom role who hates her kids … . Why does a funny female have to be relegated to this very two-dimensional role after she pops a kid out?"

"I'm Sorry" walks this tightrope, but not in a "look-at-us-for-being-so-progressive" way. They do it in a low-key manner; they're not trying to make a point.

Scott Everett White

The dynamic between Andrea and Mike is another reason the show succeeds. Rather than the usual female-male dynamic, Scott serves as the bemused foil to Savage's at-times raunchy humor. Slate singled this out in its Season 2 review, writing:

"Sometimes you watch a show and can't believe it hasn't existed before. That's certainly the case with 'I'm Sorry,' which replaces the slob husband/supportive wife sitcom formula of yore with a dynamic much more familiar to me: that of the playfully button-pushing wife and the patiently put-upon husband simultaneously charmed and exhausted by his wife's baroque, aggressive teasing."

The ease with which the two actors banter has led Savage to dispel questions over whether her and Scott are married in real life — "Spoiler alert, Tom and I are not actually married. We're both happily married to other people, I'm sorry," she stated at a Q&A screening of the Season 2 opener — but it's a testament to how well the pair work together. The excellent casting also extends to Savage's divorced parents, who turn up in various episodes and are played by TV veterans Martin Mull and Kathy Baker ("Roseanne," "Picket Fences"). The show has also scored a number of cameos from other comedians and well-known actors, including Paul Scheer, Adam Scott, Nick Kroll, Judy Greer and Judith Light.

Scott Everett White

The show touches on a number of hilarious, true-to-life topics, something that Savage prides herself and her show on tackling. Rather than trying to tackle a topic, Savage has said their writers room mines stories and instances from their own lives. The show has found Andrea trying to navigate an awkward pool moment with another parent she doesn't know well, being asked to throw a "Goddess Party" for a recently divorced friend (it's as embarrassing sounding for you as it is for Andrea to throw), or attempting to comfort her daughter over imagining Nazis hiding in her bedroom after a misguided decision to watch "The Sound of Music." ("Oh right, god, I forgot there's Nazis in that," Mike says.)

These things may sound wild and sitcom-y, but they're much closer to the real life I know, than that of, say, the haranguing seen between Debra and Ray Barone in "Everybody Loves Raymond." Go watch this funny, cringey, dirty-minded, grownup comedy show that offers a refreshing change of pace from the tropes of sitcom moms that have come before it, and is reflective of the messier bits of modern life that require a sardonic eye and wit, and yes, maybe an, "I'm sorry."

Dianne de Guzman is the Food + Drink Editor at SFGATE. Email: dianne.deguzman@sfgate.com

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Source: https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/slideshow/Im-Sorry-truTV-Andrea-Savage-Netflix-202687.php