I’m so glad that Hollywood is finally leaving behind all those sad, disturbing portrayals of Multiple Personality Disorder. You know, like Sally Field’s Sybil or Joanne Woodward’s Eve White…er Eve Black…Jane? Stop this crazy thing?

Anyway, now we’ve got a far funnier, far lighter take on this disease, now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder. You know, because a lot of the classic mental illnesses needed a bit of pizazz to liven them up a bit. It’s not manic depression! It’s bipolar disorder! Now, what can we call schizophrenia? How about “Can You Hear Us Now?” Syndrome?

Am I sounding a bit flippant? I do apologize. I think, however, that anyone who has lived with a severe mental illness in their life, whether their own or that of someone they love, develops a bit of a gallows humor when it comes to discussing such things. It’s been a part of my life since I was 10, and I have a wicked sense of humor about it, as does my family. It’s a coping mechanism, a way to process the fact that sometimes horrible things happen and there’s no real way to “fix” any of it. Just tame it with pills, temper it with therapy, and accept that it is what it is.

Besides, it makes for a great ice breaker when you can tell the story about how you spent part of your 16th birthday in a locked ward, sharing cake with schizophrenics.

Anywho. So this show, United States of Tara, is all about Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID. The titular Tara, played by Toni Collette, houses several distinct personalities within her: Alice, the hyper-happy housewife who’s like Donna Reed on Speed; Buck, the grizzly beer-bonged Vietnam vet; and T, the 16-year-old nympho-minx who gets away with a hella lot just because she happens to “look mature for her age.”

Here’s the happy “family” all together: Buck, Alice, Tara, and T.

Buck is Tara’s protector, the Alter meant to keep her safe from the memories of whatever trauma she survived in her adolescence that left her fractured into all these different personalities. He also keeps safe those Tara loves; he surfaces when there’s trouble in Tara’s life that she is simply ill-equipped to handle. He’s a lefty with a mean right hook, gruff and offensive, but secretly kind and caring. Alice is the Ladies Home Journal ideal of femininity and motherhood. She surfaces whenever Tara is unable to deal with her children or her marriage. She’ll bake you some muffins, mix you a martini, and wash your mouth out with public restroom liquid soap if you’re not careful. T, probably the most obnoxious of the Alters so far, is a foul-mouthed sex-crazed teen, possibly Tara’s exaggerated way of reclaiming her right to express herself freely, unshackled by the chains of whatever repressed trauma left her this way.

Just for the record, Buck is undeniably my favorite of the Alters.

It’s a delicate dance, this show, dealing with unfunny truths in a wickedly funny style. When I first heard about it, I was