Promoting Adultery one Program at a Time?: Thoughts on ABC’s Mistresses

Summer programming is always scarce and usually I use the opportunity to clear my DVR (which is currently housing episodes of shows that got cancelled and weeks of General Hospital) and binge view cable shows compliments of my Netflix subscription.  However, I caved in and decided to start recording a few new shows that were launched for the summer hiatus.  One of these is ABC’s Mistresses. 

I have described the show to people as one that is trying (and failing) to be Sex in the City but succeeding in being a typical, fairly well done melodrama.  I was initially enticed to watch it because I’m a product of the 80s and I liked Alyssa Milano on Who’s the Boss (she plays Savannah/Savi on this show), so I was eager to see her in a role as an adult.  I also was curious to see Yunjin Kim play a very different role from Sun on Lost.   And I like Jason George (Bailey’s husband on Grey’s Anatomy and one of the stars of the short-lived series, Off the Map) – he’s easy on the eyes and always plays a sexy, sweet talker.   I’ve also studied the phenomena of the female quartet:  the way chick flicks and women’s television create a friend group of four females who all play set archetypes (the maneater/sex kitten, the feminist/professional, the romantic/dreamer, the ditz/flake).  Characters on these shows do not always translate perfectly as ghosts of programs past but on this show Josslyn/Joss (Jes Macallan) is a younger version of Sex in the City’s Samantha and one can’t help but seeing the similarities between single mom, April (Rochelle Aytes) and Desperate Housewives’s Susan.  Although the characterization on the show is really much of the same, I think the show can be applauded for its racial diversity.  Female foursomes on the small and big screen are notoriously white – not so in this show.

In terms of the plot, the series quickly launched into a set of intriguing storylines (developed a bit too quickly in order to avoid the cancelation that accompanies long periods of exposition/backstory during the early episodes of a new show).  Of these narrative threads the major ones include:  1) Savi & Harry’s infertility problems that result in her having a one night stand with her co-worker, Dominic (which results, of course, in a pregnancy in which, of course, the paternity is in question); 2) April discovering that her dead husband has fathered a child with a mistress she never knew of (and now this ‘other woman’ is extorting her for money); and 3) Karen mourning the loss of her lover (who was also her terminally ill, married patient at her psychiatric clinic, who she prescribed a lethal dose of morphine to so he could end his own life) and dodging a variety of complications (being discovered by her lover’s wife; being implicated in his death during a criminal investigation launched by the insurance company; and being stalked by her lover’s twenty-something son, who now has an infatuation with her).    Sex, love, betrayal, secrets – the typical combination of a melodrama.  But is this typical combination problematic?

When I told a friend I was watching the show she said she had a problem endorsing a show that basically promoted adultery and I found that thought lingering in my mind.    This passing comment took on even more relevance when I saw that ABC was advertising another adultery-themed show, Betrayal, which is set to debut in the fall.  At a glance it looked like Unfaithful for the small screen, but in reading up on it, it appears both cheating parties will be married in this program.   So, just as I’ve been troubled by my ability to consumer such violent programming recently (I just finished the 2^nd from last season of Dexter without flinching), I’m not pondering my ability to have no moral problem with these adultery-themed shows.

I think part of it is that I’ve grown up watching soap operas where adultery is way more common than fidelity.  But a bigger part is that it IS a staple of the genre.  Almost out of necessity.  Any careful viewer, and television scholar, knows that the narrative kiss of death is a happy couple.   If you’re in a happily paired couple on a television program, chances are you’re being written off (at least in dramas, family-based sitcoms usually avoid this trap).  This is why the “will they, won’t they” storyline is so common in shows.  It’s why Jack and Kate couldn’t get together until the end of Lost; it’s why Carrie and Big couldn’t get their happily ever after until the end of the Sex in the City (and why its continuously in peril in the film sequels); it’s why Rachel and Ross had to break up so often on Friends, it’s why Who’s the Boss got canceled shortly after Tony and Angela got together.  If a show depends on a super couple (or even a set of couples), then the narrative must ensure that they are interesting.  What makes a couple’s story interesting?  Conflict.  Sure there are tons of possible conflicts – serious ones like illness and potential death and less serious ones like financial hardship, job complications, family drama – but of all the possible conflicts the one that attracts most viewers is, unsurprisingly:  sex.  Viewers adore love triangles and living vicariously through the bad behavior of the onscreen players.  So adultery storylines are common.  (Followed by break-up or reconciliation storylines, case dependent). 

Does consuming these narratives where affairs are glamorized weaken the moral fabric of our country? Could we find a correlation between the prevalence of such narratives and divorce rates that would be statistically reliable?  I’m not sure.  (I took statistics twice and received an A both times but still I’m useless in applying that knowledge).  As someone who always believes that there is a reciprocal relationship between cultural and narrative trends I’d just as likely assume that that such programming mirrors societal norms rather than prompts them.  And while I wouldn’t imagine that watching a show would make a person more likely to cheat, or change his/her view on adultery – just as I don’t think the current popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey necessarily means that S & M is experiencing its biggest boom yet – does it mean that it has absolutely no detrimental effect?  Again, I’m not sure. 

As always I rest in the mucky gray area feeling that any show is fine as long as we examine it critically – that all media products can have utility if we “talk back” to them (as Susan Douglas advocates).  So I’ll keep watching it and add it to the list of other shows, like the Bachelorette, that make me question my status as feminist, and try to find some value in it… even if that value falls into the categories of “guilty pleasure,” “mindless entertainment,” or even just “eye candy.”  After all, sometimes that’s what we need more than television programming that proposes to act as our moral compass (of which I would be infinitely skeptical of anyhow).