Workin' Moms Season 1 Review: The Working Moms Show on Netflix

Workin' Moms season one review: what the working moms show is

Catherine Reitman created Workin' Moms, a half-hour dramedy that CBC Television aired from January 10, 2017, to March 28, 2023, across seven seasons and 83 episodes. Reitman's production company, Wolf + Rabbit Entertainment, is run with her husband, Philip Sternberg. The first season has 13 episodes of about 22 minutes each, and it follows four women who meet in a Mommy and Me class in Toronto.

The original review framed it as a critical hit in Canada that was trying to branch out internationally. Netflix put the series in front of a global audience in February 2019, during the run of the third season, and Wikipedia's entry notes that all seasons are now available to stream on Netflix worldwide, including in the United States.

Season one is the part of the story that the original review covered, and it is worth placing in time. The first episode aired on CBC on January 10, 2017, and the thirteenth on April 4, 2017. By the time the series reached Netflix in February 2019, it was already into a third season at home, so the early episodes were a starting point for viewers arriving through the streamer.

The review's description of the format is still the most accurate one: this is a rare mix of drama and comedy with a three-dimensional portrayal of working women. It is not a sitcom with a laugh track and it is not a prestige drama in comedic costume. It sits in the uncomfortable middle, which is exactly where its subject lives.

Kate, Anne, Frankie and Jenny

Kate (played by Catherine Reitman) is an advertising executive who is blunt, assertive and good at her job. She constantly struggles with sexism in the workplace, which makes everything harder because she is damn good at what she does, in the review's phrase. The review also noted that Philip Sternberg, who runs the production company with her, is Reitman's husband both in real life and on the show.

Anne (Dani Kind) is a psychiatrist who is dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. She also has a nine-year-old daughter who is exploring her sexuality early, in ways the review described as mostly kisses, provocative clothes and flashing. Frankie (Juno Rinaldi) is a real estate broker who is in denial about how severe her postpartum depression has become. Jenny (Jessalyn Wanlim) is going through an early midlife crisis, has lost attraction to her husband and wants to have an affair with her manager.

The four are acerbic, and many of their choices are cringe-worthy. The review saw that as a feature. Their decisions are authentic to how much a new mother has to put up with to get back into a job after having a baby, and the show's best moments come from the way all four go for what they want, often pushing past the line for a punchline or a dramatic beat.

The Mommy and Me class

Every episode returns to the Mommy and Me class, where the children play and the women talk. The structure gives the show a recurring stage on which private lives are discussed in public, in a room full of other mothers that the core four sometimes ignore entirely.

The topics range widely: shaming over breastfeeding, how to say no to a child without using the word no, and far more extreme confessions than a class like that would normally hear. The review noted that these segments are usually executed in hilarious fashion, and that they are where the show is most willing to be crude in order to be truthful.

Who the season is for, and who should skip it

The season is candid about material that some viewers will want to know about in advance. It covers postpartum depression, an unwanted pregnancy and abortion, an extramarital affair, and a child's early sexual curiosity, and it does so with jokes. That mix will suit viewers who like their comedy bitter and their parenting stories unsanitized. It will be a poor fit for anyone who wants a warm, reassuring family sitcom.

Because season one is the foundation of a seven-season run, it is also the right place to start. The four leads stay at the center of the series for its whole run, according to the cast list, so these 13 episodes introduce the people the show follows for years. As a working moms show, Workin' Moms never loses sight of the daily logistics: the hours, the nannies, the missed events and the guilt.

Why the ensemble works

Each woman carries a different pressure, and the class puts them in one room. Kate fights for her place at work, Anne weighs a pregnancy she did not plan while parenting a daughter who is growing up quickly, Frankie hides a health crisis behind a professional face, and Jenny questions her marriage. Because the pressures differ, the four can disagree and still recognize each other, and the show uses the friendship as a support system as much as a source of conflict.

None of them is likable by default. The review accepted that as a strength: the characters make poor choices, and they make them for believable reasons. A series about working mothers could have offered four saints. This one offers four people who are tired, funny and sometimes wrong, and the writing trusts the audience to stay with them anyway.

What the season gets right about work and parenthood

Beyond the comedy, the series is open about the problems of working mothers. It deals with feeling inferior to a nanny who is becoming more of a parent than you are, missing a child's major events because of work, competing in a job with far less time than colleagues who do not have a baby, and larger subjects such as abortion and extramarital affairs.

The reviewer said that, oddly enough, the show taught more about being a parent than expected, and recommended it to recent parents. That is a notable claim for a comedy.

Workin' Moms season one verdict, and how the series ended

The original review acknowledged that international reception had been lukewarm. The review found some of the characterization uneven, though no more so than on Girls, and thought the larger problem was that viewers are not always generous toward a dramatic comedy. Notes on a dramedy often split in both directions, with one viewer asking for less comedy and another for less drama, and the review treated the matter as personal taste.

What the review recommended, it recommended without hedging: the working moms show is at its best when it admits how hard it is to be a parent and a professional at the same time, and for new parents that honesty counts for more than polish.

The series continued well beyond its first season. Season 4 was renewed on May 29, 2019, season 5 in April 2020 and season 6 in June 2021. On June 20, 2022, Reitman announced that season 7 would be the last, and the finale aired on March 28, 2023. The main cast of Reitman, Dani Kind, Juno Rinaldi and Jessalyn Wanlim headline the show, joined in later seasons by Enuka Okuma and others. New episodes aired in Canada on CBC Gem.

Sources

• Workin' Moms, Wikipedia — run dates, episode counts, renewals, Netflix release and cast