Quietly Watching

  Chuck Lorre flew to Knoxville, sat on a back porch, held a stranger's grandbaby, and asked her if she wanted to make a television show. The stranger was Leanne Morgan, a stand-up comic in her fifties who had been told for twenty-five years that she was not edgy enough and too plain. Netflix heard about the visit and called Lorre before there was anything to call about. Then it ordered sixteen episodes, which Variety described as unprecedented for the company. Season 2 arrived on August 27 with ten. Those two numbers tell you more about this show than any review of it does, mine included. The Road That Closed One thing first, because people keep asking it. The divorce is invented. Morgan's character is left by a husband of thirty-three years who breaks the news by email, and Morgan herself has been married to Chuck Morgan for more than three decades. The split was Lorre's idea. What she brought from her own life is smaller and truer: menopause, grown children, parents who ...