‘UnPrisoned’ Review: Kerry Washington Handles Comedy, Too

Paige Alexander, the high-maintenance mom played by Kerry Washington in the Hulu dramedy “UnPrisoned,” puts her family and friends through a lot. She’s also a challenge for the show’s captioners: Rendering her continual nervous laughter, which punctuates the soundtrack like the sputtering of a rusty muffler, calls for creativity. In Season 1, (laughs), (laughter) and (laughing) were supplemented with (snickers), (snorts), (chuckles), (chuckles awkwardly) and other descriptors of uncomfortable mirth.

That Paige is a marriage and family counselor and also a jittery basket case is the comic framework of “UnPrisoned,” which returned with a new season on Wednesday. The therapist needs therapy, and she gets it from everyone: her father the ex-convict; her son the anxiety-ridden gamer; her foster sister the libidinous real estate agent; and even, in Season 2, her therapist, a self-absorbed but helpful showboat played by John Stamos.

Running in parallel, and neatly explaining Paige’s problems, is the dramatic framework, in which Paige and her dad try warily to reconcile after his latest stay in prison, a 17-year stretch. His repeated absences from her life are the reason she is a reflexively negative, critical and untrusting control freak who dates only unattainable men. He’s in his 60s and suddenly has to grow up; she’s in her 40s and still has to get over her daddy issues.

Created by the television writer and relationship maven Tracy McMillan, “UnPrisoned,” which is based on McMillan’s life, is a better-than-average family comedy-drama, deft and ordinary in equal measure. Its quick half-hour episodes weave clever, familiar relationship humor with poignant reflections on the consequences of incarceration.

The material is what it is: worthwhile, but not too far north of pleasantly watchable. “UnPrisoned” can be hard to click away from, though, because Kerry Washington is such a quietly vivid, thoroughly alive presence at its center. Whether or not you buy what the show is selling, you don’t for a second doubt the realness, the ineluctable authenticity, of Paige Alexander, even as she’s driving you crazy.

Washington received plenty of attention, and two Emmy nominations, for her career-making run as Olivia Pope on ABC’s “Scandal.” But her talent and magnetism still tended to become a little lost amid the Shonda Rhimes circus, overshadowed by costumes, melodrama and take-no-prisoners attitude.