Programmer's Note

It’s not often you find two families closer than the Wallings and the Ostroffs. They live across the street from one another in their cozy New Jersey suburb, where they exer­cise together, spend holidays together and regularly have each other over for Sunday dinners. But one of the Wallings is about to get a little too close with one of the Ostroffs.

The marriage of David and Paige Walling (Hugh Laurie and Catherine Keener) may have lost a bit of its spark: David spends his nights in front of the TV in his “man cave”; Paige probably devotes too much energy to her perky Christmas carol choir. But no one would have guessed that David would end up in the arms of a woman half his age — especially when that woman turns out to be Nina (Leighton Meester), the daughter of Terry and Carol Ostroff (Oliver Platt and Allison Janney), who returns after years away at college looking a lot more womanly than when she left. In no time David and Nina are shacking up, Paige is renting an entire upscale bed and breakfast for herself just to ding David’s credit cards, Terry and Carol are baffled and ashamed, and Paige and David’s daughter Vanessa (Alia Shawkat) is taking refuge in pot and bitch sessions with her co­workers while wondering when she is ever going to get the hell out of Jersey.

Populated by one of the most inspired comedic ensembles imaginable, and helmed by Julian Farino, a veteran director respon­sible for some of the smartest, wittiest and most daring television of the last decade, The Oranges makes infidelity, humiliation and familial collapse far more of a good time than any movie has a right to. Laurie is entirely convincing as an appealing older man — even touching in his hapless adora­tion of Nina. But it’s Shawkat who somehow manages to steal the show with her razor-sharp one-liners and running commentary on the depths of domestic dysfunction. The combination ultimately builds to a satisfying, mature and unconventional climax. Jane Schoettle