Showtime’s “The United States of Tara” is a new comedy-drama television series that focuses on the everyday life of a woman (Toni Colette) with Dissociative Identity  (also known as Multiple Personality) Disorder. Based on an idea by Steven Spielberg and developed by “Juno” screenwriter Diablo Cody, the show has long been anticipated by Feminists who view Cody as the great white hope for women in Hollywood, as she’s proven herself to be adept at marketing complex, flashily alternative female characters to mass audiences. Dissociative Identity Disorder is certainly ripe territory for Feminist representation, as a writer can use it to explore a single woman’s experience with conflicting notions of femininity. In their works, the condition becomes a loose metaphor for all women who feel that multiple demands and pressures are fracturing their identities.

This method first becomes apparent in the third episode, when a self-confident yuppie-type client of Tara’s named Tiffany, makes a remark about the nature of DID:  “I feel like we all have it, a little bit,” she says. “I mean, over the course of a day, how many different women do you have to be? ‘Work Tiffany’ or ‘sex Tiffany’ or ‘dog-owner Tiffany.’ I mean it’s hard, right?” When uttered by a character routinely mocked on the show, such statements poke fun at Cody’s own keen interest in the gendered issues that such a premise begs to investigate. However, Tara’s “alters” are mostly hollow stereotypes: a June Cleaveresque 50s housewife (“Alice”), a ghetto-fabulous, hypersexual fifteen year old (“T”) and a gun-toting, beer-guzzling redneck (“Buck”).

Although Toni manages the transitions between her personalities skillfully, her highly codified performances of gender are not interesting in and of themselves, and the novelty of multiple identities soon wears off. What is perhaps more fascinating to watch is the way Tara’s alters, which seem to exist almost as pure ideas, call attention to the gendered performances of those around them. When each personality interprets the identities of Tara’s family members differently, multiple lenses are created through which to view these characters. This allows viewers to confront their own assumptions: what alter do we align ourselves with? When do we do so, and why?

For example, Tara’s openly gay 14 year old son Marshall (Keir Gilchrist) is ignored by T, victimized by homophobic Buck, and compared to Cary Grant by Alice. These run-ins between Tara’s teenage children and the alters are perhaps the most dynamic and thought-provoking encounters of the show, mostly because her children exhibit complex and layered identities. Post-modern subjects par excellence, these children appear to have sprouted fully formed from their mother’s often semi-conscious head; they are Junoesque characters with subcultural capital who inevitably stick out like sore thumbs in the show’s setting of Overland Park, Kansas.

Kate (Brie Larson), the older child, who is assertive but troubled, provides Tara’s alters with an emerging female sexual identity, which they attempt to mold in their own image according to very different expectations about young womanhood. In a breathtaking scene between Kate and Alice in the second episode, Alice becomes a kind of phantom in the eerie space of a monochromatic women’s bathroom, whose ghostly femininity serves to warn Kate: “You aren’t guarding your flower!” Kate’s response to the alter, framed by a series of rhetorical questions, is almost a manifesto:  “You mean a slut? The girl who likes boys? Who lets boys know she likes them? The girl who orgasms? Who moans and moans and screams in ecstasy? The girl who sucks and fucks? A girl with absolutely no backdoor shyness?” – at which point Alice interrupts her to wash her mouth out with soap.

It’s moments like these when Cody’s own voice is most resonant; indeed, all of the characters have a little Diablo Cody in them – a different kind of alter that can be pesky for those who were overwhelmed by the dense banter and pop cultural references of “Juno.” However, what makes this show unique is her self-conscious worldview, a huge chunk of which consists of making fun of other viewpoints–either those embodied by the alters or the opinions expressed by the often ignorant residents of Tara’s sleepy Kansas town. The most important question posed by the show, though, remains: what is the alternative to these alters, or what kind of woman is Tara herself? While attending therapy, she comes off as simply anxious about the havoc her multiple identities wreak when she is not around.

Tara’s backstory is revealed slowly and in fragments; all viewers know is that she recently went off of medication that suppressed these other identities, and that her DID stems from some sort of sexual incident in her past. Given this controversial diagnosis, the show seems to be less interested in presenting a realistic portrayal of an individual suffering from DID as it is in telling the very simple story of a woman coming into her own. Will Tara become more confident at managing these other identities, perhaps culling understanding from them along the way? Tune in to find out.

The United States of Tara airs every Sunday on Showtime at 9 PM and is available for online viewing on Showtime’s official website.