Tammy and the Television: Johnson Jam Packs Eccentric Indie Drama

Death becomes Felicity Huffman in the sophomore feature Tammy’s Always Dying from actress-turned director Amy Jo Johnson. A fractured character portrait of a daughter caring for her alcoholic mother, there’s an almost shocking number of eccentric tics crammed, both narrative and otherwise, packed into Johnson’s eighty-five-minute running time which somehow manages to seem less over-the-top than its synopsis.

At times touching, if thanks to a highly empathetic turn from lead Anastasia Phillips (as well as a somewhat contained Huffman playing a character which could have been egregiously over-the-top), it’s an interesting if not always entirely successful navigation of trauma and its exploitation which suggests Johnson is an interesting storyteller and another confirmation of Huffman’s abilities despite the highly publicized exploits of recent legal issues which, for the foreseeable future, will be baggage clouding the reception of her work.

If Huffman manages to be realistically down and dirty as the worn-out alcoholic and emotionally manipulative Tammy, Anastasia Phillips succeeds in shouldering the emotional brunt of Tammy’s Always Dying. Although it goes a bit off the rails in the third act, taking nearly an hour to get to its lavish depiction of exploiting trauma of the working class via scripted reality television, there’s arguably power in floating this merely as an idea of equally excessive but empty-headed cultural avenues with which we find it appropriate to ogle and consume the pain of others—at the same time, one wonders if this thread wouldn’t have been more powerful if embarked upon earlier, which would have made it similar to something like Shira Piven’s Kristen Wiig starrer Welcome to Me (2014).

Add to this a somewhat unnecessary side plot involving married mechanic Aaron Ashmore whom Kathy uses for meaningless sex despite the public (and eventually cartoonish) effects this has on his wife (Jessica Greco). The ever-dependable Clark Johnson is a warm accent as Kathy’s boss and confidante, while Ali Hassan as the Dr. Oz/Dr. Phil caricature Gordon Baker is ultimately an icky figment (same for the underutilized Lauren Holly whose job it is to ‘coach’ the show’s contestants).

The incredibly dark finale is a double-edged sword of hope for Kathy but Tammy’s Always Dying leaves her on the precipice of a murky future as a woman who has learned the value of better decisions and stronger convictions—but who she is and what’s she’s all about as a person aren’t really part of the busy mix.

★★½/☆☆☆☆☆