Splitting Up Together

ABC has far more family-driven sitcoms than any of its rivals. Splitting Up Together shows that the network is still finding new ways to make them work just fine.

Splitting Up Together is at its best when it leaves the granular ins and outs of this arrangement for the ways Lena and Martin are dealing with not being a unit anymore.

While the attention to the ongoing arc for Lena and Martin is sweet and at times heartfelt, the week-to-week comedy--which focuses on their three alliteratively named children, Mae, Mason, and Milo--falls flat.

The show is calculatedly and determinedly, not all that successfully, bending over backwards to not over-assign blame to either party and to make you think that it's sweet the way they're retroactively trying to change and become better spouses to each other in their new living situation.

As romantic comedies go, it's a perfectly durable (if familiar) concept, the problem being that while there's a movie in it, as a series, the teasing-out process feels strained after only a couple episodes.

A serviceable if predictable single-camera comedy.

While there are some funny lines and moments sprinkled throughout the initial four episodes, the first of which debuts Tuesday night on ABC, the characters are pretty one-dimensional and the stakes never seem as high as they should on a show that explores one of life’s most stressful events.