'You Me Her' star Greg Poehler talks TV threesome

If Hallmark had a card  for the characters of You Me Her, it might read:

Roses are red, violets are blue
We both love you madly and each other, too.

An offbeat TV  comedy from John Scott Shepherd (Save Me) that begins its second season on DirecTV's Audience Network on Valentine's Day, You Me Her stars Greg Poehler (Welcome to Sweden) and Rachel Blanchard (Fargo, 7th Heaven) as married couple Jack and Emma, and Priscilla Faia (Rookie Blue) as their girlfriend, Izzy. This season, they're ready to out themselves as a "throuple" to their suburban friends and neighbors.

What could possibly go wrong?

You (like most of their friends) might be appalled. Or maybe you're thinking this is the Three's Company you always wanted.

Either way, Poehler wants you to know You Me Her is probably not what people who've never seen it might be imagining.

"It never really goes down that road of where you would expect of one guy with two women," he said in an interview last month. "Certainly, my character is enjoying it the least out of all three of them, pretty much in every episode this season."

For those who missed the first season -- that included me -- Poehler offered a quick recap:

"He meets up with [Izzy]. She's an escort. And then he immediately confesses to his wife, and then she's upset about it, so she arranges a meeting with her as well. She wants to know this girl that he obviously had feelings for. And then they get together as well." Emma is bisexual, something she apparently hadn't mentioned to Jack during their nine years of marriage, "and I think my character feels very threatened by that."

Jealousy plays a huge part this season, as "we start really delving into the logistics of the relationship," he said. "With three people, it's an odd number. It's literally odd, and somebody's going to be left out at all times."

And then there are the small things. For instance, who drives? Who calls shotgun? In Tuesday's episode, Izzy sets her lovers straight on "couples privilege," pointing out that she and Rachel both "assumed the unicorn would ride in the back. The unicorn -- that's me. The third." She ends up with the keys to the Land Rover, but it's the first of many negotiations to come.

Even in famously unpuritanical Stockholm -- where Poehler, a lawyer-turned-stand-up comic (and, yes, Amy Poehler's brother), lives with his Swedish wife and their children -- a triad like Jack and Emma and Izzy's can be tough to explain.

"I think the Europeans are a lot freer when it comes to what a relationship should look like. The cultural and societal norms there are certainly a little more flexible. But I've done some interviews [in Sweden] about the show, and the whole three-person relationship still is a bit" of a hurdle, he said. "They're also an incredibly feminist country, and I think it worries them when they see a show with a man with two women."

Does the idea worry his wife?

"My wife doesn't know what I'm doing," he joked. "No, when I'm watching with her I have to fast-forward a lot, distract her during a lot of scenes."

As for Poehler's parents, would they have expected "that I would be in a throuples show? Probably not."

But he and his sister "come from a kind of a very fun, loving family. My parents certainly want us to pursue our own happiness, so I don't think they would be the worst parents to bring a third person home to," he said, laughing.