Catherine Loerke, Director, Writer 

Sloan Grant(s) Received: 2022, Brooklyn College, Student Discovery Award Honorable Mention

Project Type: Pilot

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Length: 60 minutes

Field of Science: Biology

Stage: Development 

Synopsis: 

Planning-obsessed MARGOT always knew she’d be a doctor, drawn to science for its promise of predictability and control. But when her infertility destroys her marriage to VLAD (he wanted to stop trying, she didn’t), she re-channels her heartbreak into making her patients’ plans happen. Pay no attention to the woman repressing her emotions behind the curtain! She founds a cutting-edge IVF clinic, and after years of late nights in the lab, develops an experimental mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT) protocol that could revolutionize reproductive science and help desperate patients. But as her mother JUDITH says, “If you wanna make God laugh, make plans.”

Margot celebrates one hell of a 40th birthday. Her clinic’s lousy with expectant parents. She anticipates $20M from the NIH for a trial of her protocol. True, she’s suppressed her grief over her infertility and divorce. Yeah, her mom’s her only friend. Otherwise, killing it.

But when the NIH demands she expand and replicate her results on a compressed timeframe for funding, Margot struggles to recruit patients for her trial. She confronts STU, a touchy-feely anti-IVF therapist steering away his “Differently Fertile” support group members. Stu accuses her and the fertility-industrial complex of taking advantage of vulnerable women. She defends herself as their only hope.

Meanwhile, she battles ex-husband Vlad’s efforts to enroll the one patient she doesn’t want: his new wife NOOR, a wellness empress whose “fake science” Margot despises. Margot tells Noor off. Emotional, impulsive Noor defects to a competing lab in Greece.

Desperate, Margot opens up to the DIFFERENTLY FERTILES and several enroll. But just as her enrollment grows, a heart attack renders Judith comatose and the NIH pulls her funding – influenced by a senator with reproductive research in her crosshairs. Margot must disappoint her patients. Devastated, she breaks down at her mother’s bedside. Unexpectedly, Stu helps Margot admit she wants to try her protocol on herself and impregnate. Margot joins the support group. For the first time, she takes a leap of faith. No plan. No safety net. Judith revives at the magic word: grandmother.

Now the trial has both her professional reputation and her personal happiness riding on it. Margot wants this so badly that she humbles herself and beseeches Noor to return from Greece and fund the trial. Noor agrees on one condition: that Margot guarantee Noor will be in the experimental, not placebo, group: a verboten move in clinical trials. For the chance to get everything she’s ever wanted, is Margot desperate enough to cross that line?

In season 1, Margot struggles to conduct her experimental IVF trial with her new “fake-science” partner, who brings ethical dilemmas along with her ashwagandha – and worse, pushes Margot to feel. They battle each other and the senator trying to shut them down. Margot wrestles with her messy love triangle, forced to help her ex-husband, who she’s still in love with, have a baby with her nemesis.

At the end of season 1, Margot opens her heart to the Differently Fertiles, her mind to Noor’s ideas, and gets pregnant. Season 2 explores being a pregnant fertility doctor. Margot and Noor lose their trial when its funding source is exposed, forcing them to finally work together. In future seasons, parenthood proves the ultimate lesson in letting go for a control-freak. Margot becomes vulnerable and falls for Stu, the therapist. She juggles career and motherhood as a single working parent, all while exploring new and fascinating reproductive technologies. We dissect the ethical quandary she created by getting into bed (metaphorically!) with Noor and Vlad, as well as using her own eggs in her protocol. She fights Senator Salazar, gaining, then losing, ground in her quest to have MRT approved. When all seems lost, Margot and Noor make a new baby together: a fertility center integrating Margot’s cutting-edge science with Noor’s alternative approaches. While they clash over the vision, Margot adds scientific rigor to Noor’s intuition, and Noor helps Margot see her patients as more than lab results and p-values. The real love story is Margot and Noor. The evolution of their bond is why we’ll tune in week after week.

Each episode has three storylines: 1) A “case of the week” where Margot treats a member of the Differently Fertiles, showcasing a diversity of perspectives and medical cases – unlimited story engines. 2) Margot’s serialized arc to revolutionize reproductive medicine. 3) The love triangles and mother-daughter drama that are the heartbeat of the show. All are connected by the show’s central thematic question: How do we take that ultimate risk: to stay vulnerable in a world filled with constant uncertainty and loss? Over the series, as Margot grapples with her own failures, Noor helps Margot transform into an empathizer. As Margot’s empathy grows, so will ours.