Major TV Event?

Riding on the Metro North today, I noticed a poster for "The Starter Wife" (yes, we saw it, so yes, your marketing team put it in a good spot). I took issue with this poster on many levels, although Deb Messing looked fabulous on it.

First, the term "The Starter Wife" is at once scary and ridiculous. Are we to assume that there are women out there who are willing to enter into a marriage for the purpose of marital practice for men? Or, and perhaps more startling, are there men out there who seek out wives with their second already on the horizon? "Yes, you'll do for now but when I'm older and wiser and have achieved a certain level of income and prestige, I'll need something more sophisticated and perhaps better dressed." Not that this hasn't happened since the dawn of time. I'm sure those wives who struggled working two jobs putting their husbands through grad school, law school or medical residencies are nodding emphatically.

So perhaps it's that the implication of this title isn't - well, implied any more. It's there. Solid. Stated. "Starter Wife." Not First Wife, not Only Wife. Starter Wife.

And while that alone could have outraged me enough for my entire ride into the city, I still had to deal with the heading just below the title: Major TV Event. Right. A movie about a women moving on with her life after finding herself in the position of "starter wife" has now become a Major TV Event. Now, I completely support the growth of women at all stages of their lives. God knows, I've been in the position of having to reinvent myself after a divorce. But a Major TV Event? Not only has this story been told before (and I would wager that the First Wives Club might deserve a "major" before this movie does), but I also think we should reserve our Major TV Events for major TV events - wars, floods, tornadoes - any kind of natural disaster, murders, new presidents, Amber alerts. You get the picture.

Overstatement runs rampant in this society. Let's remember that entertaining or not, a movie is a movie is a movie, not a TV event, major or otherwise.