Paula Proctor

Paula is a paralegal in West Covina, married with kids and a law career stalled somewhere behind her, until Rebecca walks in radiating chaos and possibility. She latches onto Rebecca's pursuit of Josh with total, gleeful commitment, treating someone else's romantic scheme as the most exciting thing that's happened to her in years.

Donna Lynne Champlin plays devotion as its own kind of madness, matching Rebecca's delusions with a ferocity that's funnier and sadder because it's borrowed. The show uses Paula to ask what happens to a woman who's spent decades being sensible, and Champlin's belt-it-out musical numbers make her hunger impossible to look away from.