Mom
D: Erin Greenwell; with Julia Goldman, Emily Burton, Emma Bowers, Mary C. Matthews
A conservative blonde and a spiky-haired lesbian on a road trip together seems like a good way to make a car implode with emotion. Greenwell, however, perceived it as means to conduct a nonabrasive story on the similarities between polar-opposite personalities. Kelly and Linda work for a company called Open Can, which specializes in "video presentation research," or videotaping the needs of everyday consumers and selling them to companies. The co-workers are types A and B, but their journey in a town called Little Hope shows that their needs, desires, fears and shortcomings are not all that different. Add chili cookoffs, midnight sexcapades with the married folk, and a midlife crisis, and it's fun for the whole family. Greenwell takes the palette of a small, bland cityscape and draws it out with in-depth characters, provocative dialogue, and real personalities. Through Kelly and Linda's misadventures, the quaint suburban town of Little Hope hints that it might have more to offer than its name for these two visitors.
