Workin' Moms
ワーキングママ
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Four Toronto mothers back at work; postpartum sex, pumping in meetings and saying the unsayable in mommy-and-me.
Four women who met at Toddler Time, a mommy-and-me class in Toronto, go back to work after maternity leave. Kate Foster returns to her public relations firm and learns by text that she has missed a milestone in her baby's life. Her best friend, the psychiatrist Anne Carlson, finds she is pregnant again with a baby already at home; she and her husband, Lionel, decide on an abortion. Frankie Coyne, an estate agent, is sinking into postpartum depression, and her marriage to Giselle is fraying. Jenny Matthews, an IT specialist, goes back to work reluctantly and drifts from her husband, Ian, who leaves her at the end of the first season.
The second season ends with Kate launching her own firm and then seeing her husband, Nathan, kissing Anne's nanny. She moves out, gives birth to their daughter, Ella, and slowly lets him back in; by the fourth season they are together again. Anne exposes her former husband, a professor who sexually assaulted students under hypnosis, struggles with her daughter Alice, and moves the family to Alberta, where lockdown strands them before they come home. Frankie, now married to her neighbour Bianca, is shattered when a young employee dies trying to prove a building's windows are safe; she quits, makes peace with Kate and leaves the story after the fifth season. Nathan, it turns out, has a teenage son, who comes to live with them after his mother dies.
In the last two seasons Kate admits she is addicted to work. Anne, estranged from Kate, makes up with her by phone moments before a patient who has been stalking Alice runs her down; she survives with a new hunger for life. Jenny, who claimed a pregnancy to hold on to her boss and lover, Malcolm, turns out to be pregnant, then miscarries, quits and sets out, clumsily, to become a better person. Sloane Mitchell, a publishing executive who never meant to settle down, has a son and keeps working. A pharmaceutical boss kisses Kate; she tells Nathan, and the marriage holds.
In the final episode Kate's team has sold out to a pharmacy company. At her father's grave she sees his ghost, who tells her to go with the magic, and she quits to reopen her own business with her old colleagues. Alice, urged on by Anne, leaves for a year in Australia. Jenny returns the valuable ring her daughter took from her grandmother and resolves to change for her. Sloane takes the maternity leave she had refused. Val, the endlessly cheerful leader of Toddler Time, marries Mel and at the wedding asks the mothers what they hope to pass on to their children. Then Kate heads out to work.
Starring
Catherine Reitmanas Kate Foster
A public relations executive back at work after maternity leave, who ends up running her own firm and facing her addiction to work.
Kate Foster’s story
Kate comes back from maternity leave and learns by text that she has missed a milestone of her son Charlie's. She takes a posting in Montreal without telling her husband, Nathan, walks out on a client when Charlie is taken to hospital, and is fired for secretly working for a rival. With a discrimination settlement she starts her own firm, and at Anne's commitment ceremony sees Nathan kissing Anne's nanny. She moves out, gives birth to their daughter, Ella, and takes him back. After burning her arm in a fire she starts while distracted by work, she admits to Anne that she is addicted to it. When a client kisses her, she tells Nathan. In the end she sells the firm, sees her dead father at his grave, quits the buyer and starts again with her old team.
Dani Kindas Anne Carlson
Kate's best friend, a blunt psychiatrist whose temper and fierce love for her daughter Alice keep landing her in trouble.
Anne Carlson’s story
Anne, a psychiatrist with a nine-year-old, Alice, and a new baby, finds she is pregnant again, and she and her husband, Lionel, choose an abortion. When her ex-husband, Brad, sets up as a hypnotherapist in her building, she records him trying to plant sexual thoughts in her mind, and when two of his students say he sexually assaulted them, she takes them to the dean and he is fired. Her fury keeps outrunning her: she hides a client's gun that Alice then fires, slaps a mother on live television and attacks the patient who has been stalking Alice. In anger management she admits what her rage has cost. Moments after making up with Kate, she is run down by that patient's car. She survives, exhilarated, and talks a heartbroken Alice into going to Australia after all.
Juno Rinaldias Frankie Coyne
An estate agent struggling with postpartum depression, whose marriage to Giselle breaks down before she finds love with her neighbour Bianca.
Frankie Coyne’s story
Frankie goes back to selling houses as postpartum depression pulls her under. She falls asleep with her daughter, Rhoda, in the bath, breaks down in front of a client and, in a manic spell, sells the family home online; her wife, Giselle, says she will leave unless Frankie gets it back. She does, and asks for help, but by the next season the marriage is over. After a job at a wellness centre and two affairs she goes back to estate work and falls for her neighbour, Bianca; together they raise Bianca's son, Solomon. When Brody, a young agent she hired, falls to his death trying to prove a building's windows are safe, she loses her staff, apologises to his father, quits and makes up with Kate. After the fifth season she is gone.
Jessalyn Wanlimas Jenny Matthews
An IT specialist who drifts from her husband and baby after returning to work, and spends the series learning, slowly, to be kinder.
Jenny Matthews’s story
Jenny goes back to her IT job reluctantly, feeling that Ian, at home with their baby, Zoe, is the one who bonds with her. She flirts with her boss, gets her nipple pierced and realises she wants out, and Ian leaves her. Arrested for leaving Zoe in a car, she offers him full custody, then wins back time with Zoe while telling colleagues, falsely, that Ian is abusive. A pay-gap protest brings a hush-money raise and an affair with the executive Malcolm. To keep him she claims to be pregnant, finds she is, and miscarries at work without telling him. When none of her friends can name a favourite memory of her, she tells them about the miscarriage, then tells Malcolm and quits. Finally she returns the ring Zoe took from her grandmother and resolves to change for Zoe.
Philip Sternbergas Nathan Foster
Kate's husband, whose affair with Anne's nanny nearly ends their marriage, and who later learns he has a teenage son.
Enuka Okumaas Sloane Mitchell
A publishing executive who never planned on children, who becomes Kate's demanding client and then a mother herself.
Why it matters
Workin' Moms is about the day maternity leave ends: the desk someone else has been keeping warm, the milestone missed by text, the body that has not finished recovering. Catherine Reitman conceived it as a new mother and made it with her husband, Philip Sternberg, who plays Nathan, and it treats what comedies usually tiptoe around, postpartum depression and abortion among them, as bluntly as it treats breastfeeding. It ran for seven seasons on CBC and reached viewers around the world through Netflix from 2019. Its most useful idea is that there is no single right answer. In the last episode one mother bets everything on her own business and another steps back from her career to be at home, and Reitman has said the second was the braver choice for that character. The series lets both stand, and leaves the weighing to whoever is watching.