Review: Mother Up! ‘Pilot’

Spoilers Below

First episode and we are already seeing the troubles of working in the music business. Rudi’s artist 2bit causes some sort of controversy and as a result she is pretty much forced to resign. Thankfully, she’s able to blame all her job troubles on her former employer whom tries everything in his power to throw the now exec music exec under the bridge. As such, Rudi makes the decision to move out of the city and take on kid-raising full-time.

Rudi moves into her new house and right away she gets divorced and has to send her kids off to their first day at school. It’s here we meet a life coach named Greg, the head of the PTA Jenny, and a whole bunch of mothers. The problem is Rudi’s kids aren’t fitting in with class because her daughter, Apple, can’t swim and her son, Dick, is allergic to peanuts much to her surprise. This causes Rudi to get stupid drunk, but she isn’t giving up on being a mom…yet!

To try and get back at Jenny, Rudi decides to throw Dick the best birthday ever despite the fact that it’s nowhere near his birthday. Problem is the party is turning into a disaster and Jenny is the reason why. Soon, the kids go nuts at the arty and start to become restless, but 2bit shows up and performs leaving Jenny PISSED! The kids end up loving Rudi and they end up loving her right back. Best yet, if you need a mother to stick up for your kid, Rudi may be the best at doing so.

Eva Longoria got the right person on board in Michael Shipley (Family Guy) because this show is going to need more ingredients if it’s going to be able to stick around. That said, less we forget this is just the pilot and shows have a habit of getting better from their first go-round and yes I do think this show can do the same.

Mother Up! certainly serves up a wildly different premise surrounding a single mom who now is faced with the task of having to raise her kids all by herself. It’s a premise that hits close to home so right away I feel for Eva’s character ‘Rudi’. However, I don’t know if the pilot episode really did a great job in fleshing out all of the characters. In comparison to Hulu’s other series The Awesomes, you got to know a little bit about everyone on the first go-round but it still took a few episodes for the series to get itself in motion. Mother Up!’s pilot episode did a great job introducing us to what Rudi is now tasked in having to do. However, other than Rudi and Jenny (played beautifully by Helen Taylor), I didn’t see a great supporting cast that can help keep the series from being monotonous. Eva certainly has the voice chops to take this show on her back, I mean she’s been divorced twice and is a SAG-award winner so you are certainly getting the cream of the crop, but the show really could use more input from the ancillary characters. I liked Sarah (Gabrielle Miller) and even 2Bit (Cle Bennett) has potential, but the latter has me confused as to how the character is going to be used in future episodes. In other words, is Rudi looking to move BACK to the city with 2Bit her link?? Or is she cool with being a mommy?

The overall premise of the show is rather different and Eva’s about as edgy as she has ever been in her stellar career. Her ‘Rudi’ is definitely not your typical house-wife in an animated series and can be noted just simply by her appearance, attitude, and her parenting ‘skills’. Eva does a fantastic job in conveying the emotional distress of what it’s like being a single mom, and her kids Apple (Rebecca Husain) and Dick (Jesse Comacho) give me confidence in a good foundation for humorous story lines. More over I was really taken back with how the series is embracing the cartoon world with the most obvious example being Dick’s allergic reaction to peanuts. That type of stuff you really can’t do in live-action without a bunch of CG, and as such I hope that gets the writers to be really, really creative.

The characters are drawn/animated very bright, but their designs leave a lot to be desired as no one has physical characteristics that really stand-out save for 2Bit and Rudi, so it’s going to take me a while to get to recognize the characters. Not saying that’s a death-knell either, because King of the Hill was kind of the same way when that show first came on and it lasted 13 seasons.  I do see a huge polar bear in the title card, so maybe that can help us out.

That said, Mother Up! certainly has the tools in place to be a great show, but not if Eva has to save every episode. The writers really have to flesh out the ancillary characters and I’m looking forward to the next 12 episodes to see if that happens.