The CBC sitcom Working Moms debuted in 2017 and was nominated for the International Emmy Award for Best Comedy Series for two consecutive years. Netflix brought the laugh riot all the way from Canada for the whole world to see, and now the show has already concluded six seasons! Navigating the many challenges of motherhood as a working parent is not exactly a laugh riot. Still, the show has depicted everything from postpartum depression to abortion with a sense of humour rarely seen on TV!
The show stars Catherine Reitman as Kate Foster, Dani Kind as Anne Carlson, Enuka Okuma as Sloane Mitchell (foe turned friend/ally of the core group in seasons five and six), Juno Rinaldi as Frankie Coyne (who left the show after five seasons to pursue other projects behind the scenes ), Jessalyn Wanlim as Jenny Matthews, and Sarah McVie as Valerie "Val" Szalinsky. Reitman is also the show creator and co-producer, alongside her real-life husband, Philip Sternberg, who also plays her on-screen husband, Nathan Foster.
The best thing about the 20-minute-long episodes is how breezy and bingeable they are, which is why we would be more than happy to have a seventh season, if not more.
Why Working Moms Is Real but Breezy
For the longest time, pop culture kept confusing “strong” female characters with characters who either have literal strength or those who are robotic counterparts of men, devoid of any emotional streak. Male characters have always been allowed to exist on the big and small screens in all their flawed glory.
With the rise, and immense success, of shows like Girls, Fleabag, and I May Destroy You, we have also witnessed the rise of female characters who are just a mixed bag of regular people. They are allowed to be imperfect. They are allowed to be unlikeable as people but enjoyable as characters we can root for.
Netflix’s Working Moms fits nicely into this category but shifts the gaze away from the shiny twenty-somethings taking over the streets of New York or LA and rests its lens on 30+ women with kids, high-flying careers, and complicated private lives. These women are not struggling to make a mark on this world but are as much on a quest to keep finding and rediscovering themselves as any young adult character living out their bildungsroman stereotypes.
As life happens to them, they break out of the mold of mothers depicted as paragons of virtue by society and media for ages. Sometimes they behave like badasses you want to cheer on, but sometimes their behaviour is questionably inappropriate. Why do Jenny and Val end up playing the least likable characters, even if they bring a kind of diversity to the group of loudmouth women who are maneuvering through the many joys and pitfalls of work-life and motherhood?
The women in Working Moms have established jobs, magnificent homes, and mostly decent life partners. None of their problems seem to come without a solution; after all, they come from a certain level of privilege and also happen to have a lot of chutzpah. Their work problems are a tad bit more real than Carrie Bradshaw’s flimsy excuses for relationship articles, and their salaries (from what we can imagine) actually seem feasible enough for them to afford the kind of lifestyles that they have.
Working Moms: What to Expect in Season 7
Within the group of these mothers, the show explores different dynamics. They do not all relate to each other simply because they are mothers. Kate and Anne’s friendship, in particular, goes back decades. In season six, they take some time off from each other when they realise they’ve ended up being each other’s echo chambers. But at the very end, they realise that maybe they need to help each other grow instead of trying to go on that path separately.
Adulthood is hard as it is; without friends, it tends to suck a little bit more. So far, we have seen Kate and Anne playing cheerleaders for each other. It would be interesting to see where they take their friendship within the burgeoning premises of their growing personhood in season seven.
It would also be interesting to see Sloan soften on the edges as she has become a new mother at the end of season six. Sloan definitely is the kind of character who would be great at disciplining even a toddler and can strap on her kid and bring her to meetings where grown men regale in her expertise and startling efficiency.
Then, there is the biggest cliffhanger of all. As the season ends, Anne’s daughter Alice has an off-screen encounter with her stalker, an ex-patient of Anne who is an occupational therapist. The way things end, it seems like a rather sinister showdown was about to go down. Does this stalker end up physically harming Alice, or does she do something else that is still very much disturbing for a parent to witness? We will have to wait till season seven to figure that one out!
Release Date
CBC Television
While season 7 doesn't yet have a release date and hasn't officially been picked up, rumour has it that the show is scheduled to start shooting for the next season in June through September 2022.
Even though Netflix is on a budget cleanse, they are likely to pick up the next season of Working Moms. Notably, CBC has also produced Anne with an E, Kim’s Convenience, and Schitt’s Creek (all hit shows based in Canada as well), which are currently streaming on Netflix.