When you think about life, you really can narrow down the moments where things change. The moments where you started rethinking everything and wondering, am I doing it right? Have I screwed it up? Am I fulfilling my dreams? Or do I need to pivot?
Personally, I can name that moment. It came later than I wanted it to, but when it came, it came on strong. In Fox’s new show, Pivoting, three friends find their lives changing, when a childhood friend dies. Their lives need a change. They don’t know why or how or what, but if anything they know that they have each other to get through it with.
Amy is a producer of a morning cooking program whose job keeps her busy, but not busy enough that she couldn’t be home in the afternoon to spend time with her kids. She’s using it as an excuse to parent from a distance. Sarah is a newly divorced doctor whose job as the director of an ER at a hospital keeps her from relaxing, putting her phone down, and day drinking. Judge all you want, but day drinking can be an important part of life when you’re older. Life is fucking stressful. And lastly, there is Jodie, a Mom who is unhappy all around in her marriage and can’t seem to see that she needs to leave her husband.
They are all at a point, at their best friends funeral, where part of you wants to hate them, because they are being really judgemental over their friends funeral makeup. Hell, blue eyeshadow looks good on no one, but you don’t say that as your friend is being buried. Like no.
But what is good is that they realize that they need to make a change. They know they aren’t living life the best way and the time for a change is now. Amy wants to be a better Mom. She’s going to go home after work and spend time with her kids in the afternoon. Even her nanny doesn’t seem to think this is going to go well – you can see that in her eyes and the way she acts when she leaves.
Amy even goes as far as the next day when she goes home early to look at her Nanny and say, “My friend died and I want to be a good mother.”
Nothing about that sentence is simple.
Sarah has apparently had a nervous breakdown because she quits her job over someone eating half her burrito. We love a burrito just as much as the next person, but we also know that with a six figure salary, we could buy a new one. So we good. And why do we think she’s lost her mind? She decides that instead of being a doctor she wants to work at a grocery store.
Jodie has decided she wants to get in shape, but she’s gonna pay the trainer in cash so her husband doesn’t know. And hey, her trainer is cute, but what he is even better at is playing to egos. He’s flirting with Jodie to the point she’s got a crush. She tells him she can fit back in her skinny jeans.
There is part of us that feels bad for her as she says that, because we all know it ain’t happening. But when she gets home and her trainer texts her to send a pic – hell, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone run that fast. But I have seen the struggle to fit into them the other day when I tried to struggle into mine.
Jodie falls and calls Amy for help. Amy feels relieved that she’s needed and heads over with her kids. As a good friend, she takes pics of her friend in her jeans and then calls Sarah to help her get Jodie out of them.
It is friendship when your friends come to pull you out of clothing you can’t get out of. Jodie screams for them to cut her out, which results in her getting stabbed with scissors.
There are a lot of things that friends can do to me, but stabbing me with scissors – we’re having a battle.
The three head off to the emergency room, where Jodie admits that she has been crushing on her trainer and that she’s been faking with her husband. Yup, she’s been faking the big O, which at some point, we all do. So, no judgement here. Can’t stop laughing though when he friends make her show them the sound she fakes.
The three of them, the way that they get along, the way that they bring things out of each other, that is the type of friendships I want in life. The type that love you at your best and worst, the type that you can tell anything to – the type that will cut you out of jeans.
At home that night, Amy is talking to her baby over her crib, where she utters the word, Mom. How can that not hit you in the heart? Her son asks if she is coming home the next day after work and she says “Most Likely.”
We get it, Amy, pivoting takes time.
OTHER THOUGHTS
- Jodie dropping her groceries to run upstairs and taking a pic in her skinny jeans… we laughed. But like those groceries look like Whole Foods… that shit is expensive.
- Amy’s husband tracking her to the hospital, gotta laugh.
- Amy giving very specific instructions how she wants to look when she is buried was the best.
Pivoting, stars Maggie Q as Sarah, Ginnifer Goodwin as Jodie, and Eliza Coupe as Amy. Also included in the cast of season one is Tommy Dewey as Henry, JT Neal as Matt, and Marcello Reyes as Luke.
Pivoting airs on Fox.