Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Baby Fever’ Season 2 On Netflix, Where The Fertility Doc Who Inseminated Herself Is Now An Ambivalent New Mom

Two years ago, the Danish dramedy Baby Fever started with a fertility doc inseminating herself after finding out that she only had a few eggs left. Of course, such a move had so many ramifications for not only the doctor, but the sperm donor — who was an old flame — and everyone else in her life. Now the baby is here, and because of that, the show is a bit different than in that first season.

BABY FEVER SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A picture of Jesus Christ. We pan down to see a group of new moms and their babies sitting in a circle, being led by a reverend in a round of “Old MacDonald”.

The Gist: One of the moms is Nana Jessen (Josephine Park); she’s with her three-month old daughter, the product of her drunkenly inseminating herself with the sperm of an old flame named Mathias (Simon Sears), a customer of the fertility clinic where Nana was a doctor. Nana loves her daughter, but she’s ambivalent about being a new mother; she hasn’t even named the baby yet, and she’s visibly uncomfortable when listening to the other new moms — and one dad — talk about how much they were enjoying their parental leaves.

Nana is tired. And a bit depressed. And she’s definitely done with leave. So when her best friend Simone (Olivia Joof Lewerissa) comes to Nana’s new tiny apartment and mentions that the clinic is shorthanded due to doctors quitting over the endless construction there, Nana makes a decision to end her leave right then and there, even though new parents get six months of leave in Denmark. Her decision is cemented when she goes to another new mom meeting at the church and loses it, calling everyone’s names for their kids stupid, and pushing over a Christ statue.

She takes her daughter to the clinic to ask her old boss Helle (Charlotte Munck) for her job back. Helle needs someone of Nana’s caliber back in the fold, but is taking a chance on her due to, well, the whole self-insemination thing. She actually needs Nana to start the next day, prompting Nana to swallow her pride and ask her mother Lise (Tammi Øst) to watch the baby until she’s old enough to go to daycare.

On her first day back, Nana squeezes into too-small scrub pants and meets Hampus (Oscar Töringe), a doctor Helle calls “the new Nana,” much to Nana’s annoyance. But at least, when she talks to a potential egg donor, she doesn’t have to lie about having kids anymore. She does feel she has to lie about going back to work after only a couple of months.

Another thing weighing on Nana’s mind is that she hasn’t told Mathias about the baby yet. But when she runs into him at a supermarket, she has to figure out how to drop this bomb on him.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? During the first season, we likened Baby Fever to a combination of Catastrophe and Jane The Virgin, but in its second season it feels more like shows like Workin’ Moms and The Letdown.

Our Take: As we saw during the series’ first season, Baby Fever is trying to be both a workplace comedy about the fertility clinic where Nana works as well as a comedy about the far-reaching consequences of Nana’s drunken decision to inseminate herself. Only now, with the baby having arrived, it really feels like the show is transitioning to a comedy about parenting, and one that we’re unsure we want to keep watching.

Don’t get us wrong; Josephine Park continues to show that she’s got what it takes to play the conflicting emotions roiling inside of Nana. There’s a reason why she did what she did the year before, even if it was fueled by panic over the fact that she didn’t have many eggs left. If she didn’t want to be a mother, she wouldn’t have inseminated herself. Of course, doing what she did was highly unethical, and may have even been illegal, which doesn’t seem to play on her mind at all.

But what is playing on her mind is that she loves her daughter but is never going to fill the role of a traditional mother. Being on leave drives her nuts. The things that other parents do makes her skin crawl. This isn’t really anything different than we’ve seen in other parenting sitcoms.

So what’s left that makes Baby Fever unique? Park’s aforementioned performance, especially when she’s sharing scenes with Olivia Joof Lewerissa. There’s the matter of how Mathias finds out about the daughter he doesn’t know he has, which should drive some of the plot this season, especially given the attraction that still exists between Nana and Mathias. And the nuttiness at the fertility clinic. But without the conceit of the self-insemination at the forefront, what made the show stand out really isn’t there anymore.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Nana sees Mathias at the supermarket; she’s pleasantly surprised but knows she has to tell him the truth.

Sleeper Star: Mikael Birkkjær is Nana’s co-worker Nils-Anders, and he’s as weird as ever.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Lise unexpectedly moves in with Nana to take care of the baby, Lise addresses her daughter’s surprise when she says, “What did you expect? I can’t commute from abroad every day. It’s a 45 minute drive from Lise in Malmo, Sweden to Nana in Copenhagen. Sure, it’s a different country, but “abroad” is a bit of an exaggeration.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Baby Fever isn’t quite as good as it was in its first season, but we still enjoy Park’s lead performance, which is more than enough to keep us watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.