Pivot. 

When it is said, Ross Geller, from the TV show Friends, comes to mind. His word of hope echoes throughout the stairwell as he attempts to get his new couch up to his apartment. He just keeps on hoping that that one word will manifest it up the stairs.

He ends up cutting it in half and leaving it at the store after he learned it could not pivot the way he imagined. 

The characters of Pivoting, in the new FOX television show, are just like the couch—struggling to figure out how to live while being put in an awkward or sad position. 

Pivoting focuses on how the lives of three best friends change after the death of their fourth friend, Colleen. Jodie (Ginnifer Goodwin), a stay-at-home mom; Amy (Eliza Coupe), a working mother; and Sarah (Maggie Q), a doctor, all grieve in their own way. 

Jodie is flirting and hoping for a fling with her trainer despite her husband being alive and still married to her. Amy decides that nothing is guaranteed and becomes more involved in her kids’ lives. Sarah quits her job as a doctor to do something fun, and she lands on a cashier at a grocery store.

As they work through their journey of grief, they work through it together. Through snarky comments and hilarious scenes, the audience feels their pain and sees how it is changing them.

Pivoting tries its best to become the next great comedy. Though sometimes, it becomes a little too much. I often found myself being confused with everything going on. Sometimes the characters kept adding in more background details to their lives to give a place to jump off from later, like Sarah when we learned about her ex-wife. I was very confused whenever the topic came up—it was briefly mentioned and you had to learn more through context clues. 

However, this is part of what keeps the show feeling more real and like you are watching this lifelong friend group figure things out. There was no need for an explanation as they have been together forever. 

On the note of confusion, the opening scene does an excellent job of faking you out. While picking the show, it was very clear that it would be about how these women overcome the grief of losing their friend, but I didn’t know much beyond that. So when they opened up to the group discussing the hair and makeup of Colleen, I didn’t expect for Colleen to already be dead and in the coffin, which led to a moment of confusion and a breakthrough of laughter. 

In between bursts of laughter from miscommunications and real-life problems, the audience truly sees how people can pivot so much after a life-altering and perspective-changing event. 

Whether it be a couch or life, pivots will always need to be made. Pivoting demonstrates that with a sense of comedy, despite it being about a tragic topic, it can become a quality show for me to watch as a quick source of entertainment.