Yellow Bird

"Yellow Bird" follows Jake Rush, a once successful public relationships specialist, who, in his mid-forties, has fallen on hard times. He now works as a “stock boy” at a rural grocery store called “The Yellow Bird,” and is stuck in a loveless marriage with his wife, Ellie. Over their 12-year-marriage, Ellie drained Jake’s finances. When Jake met Ellie, she was a divorcee with a seven-year-old daughter, Kacey, who competed in child beauty pageants. Now nineteen, Kacey is an obnoxious, overweight recluse, who binges on junk food and television shows. Ellie and Kacey’s vile dispositions literally drive Jake to drink, to the point that he joins AA. Struggling to make ends meet, Jake can’t afford to divorce Ellie, so he waits for her to make the first move while trying to maintain some sort of normalcy in his life. Not an easy feat, considering Ellie is a cold-hearted, manipulative, gold-digger, who secretly searches – a polite way of saying sleeps with – her next potential husband. Ellie believes she’s finally found grounds for a divorce when her friend, Paula, a cashier at The Yellow Bird, snaps cell phone pictures of Jake getting cozy with a younger, prettier cashier named Becky. Truth is, Jake and Becky are just friends. Becky is in a relationship with, Rusty, a tattooed, 20-something, redneck. Becky looks to Jake as the father-figure she never knew because her father left her when she was a child. When Ellie accuses Jake of having an affair and says she has a lawyer (her new lover) representing her divorce case, Jake moves out of his house and in with his elderly, widowed mother, Rachel, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Through Rachel, Jake learns that ‘Yellow Bird’ means, the one person you cannot live without in your lifetime. This is an epiphany for Jake, who believes working at “The Yellow Bird” is a sign that will help him find the one person he cannot live without, as opposed to living with someone he cannot live with. Jake’s life begins to change for the better when he’s given a promotion as Supervising Manager of “The Yellow Bird.” He is able to afford a lawyer to save the one thing that matters the most to him — his house – while meeting potential love interests. But, when Ellie is involved in a serious car accident that leaves her in a coma, Jake’s reflects on his vows of, “For better or worse,” which enhances his struggle with sobriety. The big question at then end of Season One is: Will Ellie wake up?