{alltv} 'Tara' going down the wrong path?

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Children in peril. Sexual abuse.

In this entertainment world of desensitized viewers, apparently many producers believe those are the only things that grab our attention any more.

That's why we're praying The United States of Tara avoids that path.

Putting kids in danger, and/or having everything trace back to some horrible sexual crime, has become a sickeningly easy "go-to guy" for the makers of TV shows and films over the past decade.

Such plot devices have become almost cliche. We dare say, it's a form of lazy writing.

Now, we truly enjoy The United States of Tara, and it has not jumped that shark yet. But as the innovative series inches toward the conclusion of its second season (two episodes left), we're hoping Academy Award-winning creator Diablo Cody and her collaborators haven't forgotten the "innovative" when tracing Tara's illness.

The United States of Tara — which originates on Showtime in the United States and airs Mondays in Canada on The Movie Network and Movie Central — stars Emmy Award-winner Toni Collette as a woman struggling with multiple personalities.

The main plot of the series is Tara's attempt to figure out the origin of her numerous "alters." What was the traumatic event that caused her brain to create different people, presumably as a defence mechanism?

As the second season has progressed, Tara has been having flashbacks to 1976, when she was a young girl. We know it's 1976 because many of the images in her mind are of bicentennial celebrations in the U.S.

Tara also is having flashbacks to a woman named Mimi. Tara's younger sister Charmaine (Rosemarie DeWitt) claims to have no memory of this Mimi, but Tara and Charmaine's mom (played in delightfully vicious fashion by Pamela Reed) clearly knows more than she's sharing.

All of this was triggered by the house next door to where Tara and her family live. After the mysterious neighbour committed suicide, Tara's husband Max (John Corbett) bought the place to renovate and flip, but all the retro carpeting and furnishings and odours got Tara's noggin percolatin' about somethin'.

By the way, Charmaine is involved in this somehow, too. All of Tara's flashbacks have a wee Charmaine in them. And why, a few episodes back, was Charmaine reflexively afraid of the basement in the neighbour's house?

It all sounds pretty serious, so be aware, The United States of Tara is two-thirds comedy. We've said it before and we'll say it again, we absolutely love Tara's teenage kids Kate (Brie Larson) and Marshall (Keir Gilchrist). They're hilarious, yet three-dimensional, not just wise-crackers.

But where is this all headed?

Back in the days of classic horror films, it was enough to put pretty women in peril, running from fictional monsters and beasts.

The evidence suggests that's not enough any more. Now, far too often, TV and film writers resort to putting kids in peril, at the hands of human monsters.

We realize this may say more about our own gut reaction to parameters of exploitation, rather than society's overall state of mind.

But is it wrong or weird that we really, really, really, really don't want The United States of Tara to go there?