'Odd Mom Out': Philly writers take on Upper East Side

* ODD MOM OUT. 10 tonight, Bravo.

* BECOMING US. 9 tonight, ABC Family.

PHILLY'S Julie Rottenberg and Elisa Zuritsky aren't done with New York.

TV writers who explored singles and friendship in "Sex and the City" and took viewers backstage on Broadway in "Smash," the longtime writing partners take a bite out of another Big Apple subculture in Bravo's new comedy "Odd Mom Out."

The show, premiering tonight in back-to-back episodes, stars Jill Kargman, an Upper East Sider who plays an only slightly more outrageous version of herself as a well-off but not super-rich mother of three trying to stay afloat in a sea of affluence.

Rottenberg describes New York City as "endlessly pliable for its heightened sense of wealth and pecking order and competitiveness," and insists that the show's "most insane" stories are taken from real life.

Those would be courtesy of Kargman, a novelist, essayist and performer who regaled reporters at a press conference in January with stories of toddlers learning Mandarin to get a leg up on nursery school and 12-year-olds wearing baseball caps emblazoned with the tail numbers of their families' private jets.

"We had such an education from Jill on the Upper East Side scene," said Zuritsky, who, like Rottenberg, now lives in Brooklyn, which, she noted, "has its own rat race."

A seasonlong subplot on "Odd Mom Out" will deal with Kargman's character's frantic search for a kindergarten that will take her 5-year-old twins.

"Thank God we're both in schools," said Zuritsky, who, like Rottenberg, has a daughter and a son.

"Thank God," echoed Rottenberg. "But it was hellish, the process."

The pair, who met at a Center City theater class at 9 and graduated from Germantown Friends School in 1988, weren't entirely unfamiliar with social stratification before moving to New York.

"I grew up in Center City," said Rottenberg, who "definitely felt like the poorest person [at GFS] because I took the subway and the trolley until I could start getting rides with people."

Zuritsky grew up on the Main Line, "which does have a little bit more Upper East Side action happening," and recalled spending two years at Lower Merion's Harriton High, "where the parking lot, even then in the '80s, was filled with BMWs."

At Germantown Friends, "the pecking order was a little more based on intellect," Zuritsky said. "Although you did know who had money."

Not that that was the aspect of the school they credit with helping to launch their careers.

"The writing. My God, the writing," said Zuritsky of the school.

"I had some of the best English - I was going to say professors, because some of the best teachers I had in writing were at GFS. And even in college [Barnard], I was sort of on a quest to find teachers who inspired me as much as [now retired English teacher] Peter Reinke did."

"They were so supportive. They let me do a directed independent study that I completely designed myself, where I wrote a play and starred in it and directed it, learned how to do the lights and the sound," Rottenberg said.

Why would an ABC Family show be following an Evanston, Ill., high-school junior named Ben around with a camera crew?

Here's why: "Her name is Carly. And Carly was my dad."

Produced by Ryan Seacrest - who'll also be producing Caitlyn Jenner's E! series "I Am Cait" - "Becoming Us" explores the relationship between Ben and his transgender parent, formerly known as Charlie.

That Ben's girlfriend, Danielle, also has a transgender father ("It's just a small world, people") seems a touch made-for-TV, but the kids truly are OK, and their dealings with all four of their parents feel more real than surreal.

At least until their two dads, who'd apparently never met before, go bra-shopping in the premiere.

At which point we're bound to remember that that this coming-of-age docuseries is from the same guy who brought us "Keeping Up With the Kardashians."

And if we've learned nothing else from Jenner's recent emergence as Caitlyn it's that no discussion of the emotional and social ramifications of being transgender is apparently complete without some lingering over lingerie.

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