What I’m Watching: Work in Progress

Work in Progress: Season 2, Episode 2 “Everything's Fine, Everything's Okay” (B+)

The leak that appeared to damage most of Abby’s precious journals was a devastating development for her, one that she was hopeless to do much about given the state they were in, and what better way for viewers to try to understand what she was going through than to travel back through her life to grasp their importance. I thought that Shaya Harris, who played the sixth and eighth grade versions of Abby, was absolutely spectacular, and it was entertaining to hear her carefully thought-out theory of sitting next to the fattest kid either for scale or to help them out, depending on where she fell in comparison. Alison really was the worst to her, and she also felt ignored because Abby’s anxiety meant that her parents gave her more attention. There was something extremely powerful about the adult Abby replacing her younger self in a few of those scenes, particularly to tell her dad that she wished he was around more. Tracking her first five therapists, which included hand puppets and a lunch lady, was both enjoyable and informative, and Dr. Oh seemed to be a truly good influence who finally gave Abby permission to feel okay about not perceiving herself to be normal. There were certainly chaotic moments, like Abby getting too caught up in the allure of a particular forbidden word that she heard her mom’s friend use and then accidentally using it to casually refer to her teacher, the kind of mortifying occurrence that still happens in Abby’s adult life.