Showtime’s Work in Progress sounds, on paper, like the show a right-wing cultural warrior would make up to caricature the “woke” entertainment industry. Comedian Abby McEnany stars in this semi-autobiographical series as a suicidal, middle-aged, self-described “fat… queer dyke who hasn’t done sh-t in her life.” Her healing journey involves dating a 20-something trans man (Theo Germaine) and confronting SNL alum Julia Sweeney, whose androgynous character Pat bears a humiliating resemblance to Abby. The thing is, McEnany, co-creator Tim Mason, and a team of executive producers that included Lilly Wachowski as well as Sweeney immediately subvert any expectation of a sanctimonious or self-serious exploration of identity. As executed, the 2019 show is an emotional yet refreshingly unsentimental black comedy that snickers in the face of empowerment buzzwords like, well, healing journey. In its frustratingly brief, two-season run, Work in Progress expanded outward from Abby’s immediate crisis, using everything from childhood flashbacks to the societal reset of COVID-19 to interrogate—often hilariously—how a person might come to feel so lonely and desperate at a stage of life when we’re expected to have everything figured out. Fans of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere will definitely see parallels here. But really, Abby’s plight should be relatable to anyone who doesn’t pre-judge her for leading with her identity. The midlife crisis is, after all, a tale as old as Dante.
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