The show was created by J.J. Abrams and Elizabeth Meriwether and starred Andy Samberg as Will, the central single father who somewhat accidentally becomes the organizing figure for the group of single parents in his son’s elementary school. The show’s comedy was built around the specific absurdities of parenthood — the way children expose adults’ pretensions, the way the demands of childcare can strip away any pretension toward coolness — and Meester’s Angie was the most grounded member of the ensemble, the one whose practical wisdom and warmth anchored the group’s dynamics.
It was a two-season run: the first season in 2018 to 2019, the second in 2019 to 2020. The second season was the show’s last; ABC declined to renew it. The cancellation was not a critical failure — the show had received reasonably good notices and had developed a loyal audience — but the renewal arithmetic of network television in 2019 to 2020 worked against it.
The show deserves more attention than it typically receives in profiles of Meester because it represented the most complete departure from the Blair Waldorf archetype that she had yet undertaken in her television work. Angie D’Amato was not simply a different kind of character from Blair Waldorf; she was a character whose entire value system was different. Blair valued social position, institutional prestige, the maintenance of control over her environment. Angie valued competence, warmth, honesty, the practical business of keeping her family functioning. The performance required different tools: warmth rather than control, comedy rather than irony, the specific pleasure of an ensemble dynamic rather than the specific pleasure of a queen bee’s strategic isolation.