In HBO’s new half-hour comedy series, BORED TO DEATH, Jason Schwartzman (RUSHMORE) plays a writer named Jonathan Ames. The show itself is created by the real writer Jonathan Ames, author of several books, including the acclaimed graphic novel THE ALCOHOLIC.
But the onscreen Ames has only written one novel, and is struggling mightily with his second. He harbors not only writer’s block, but an addiction — “regimen,” he prefers — to white wine and marijuana. When his girlfriend (Olivia Thirlby of JUNO) leaves him high and dry at the beginning of the pilot, he doesn’t know what to do … until he trips across Raymond Chandler’s aptly titled 1940 novel, FAREWELL, MY LOVELY.
Presumably re-absorbing the paperback, he impulsively posts an ad on Craigslist as an unlicensed private investigator. Just like that, he gets an assignment, helping a desperate young woman look for her missing sister, with whom she was supposed to attend a concert. With no true detection skills of which to speak, he carries Chandler in his pocket for inspiration/reference, burns through bribe money, and uses the name “Philip Marlowe” as an alias while on a stakeout.
Amid this work, he interacts with George (a game Ted Danson), a self-medicating magazine maven for whom Jonathan freelances; and his best friend, Ray (Zach Galifianakis, fresh from — and still channeling — THE HANGOVER), a comic book writer/illustrator who’s henpecked by his sex-withholding, single-mom new girlfriend (Heather Burns). (Ray’s drawings come courtesy of Ames’ ALCOHOLIC artist Dean Haspiel.)
The premise is interesting, and Schwartzman does all he can in the first episode to appear as inept yet as sincere as possible. Problem is, amusing though it is, funny it is not. But stick with it, because the second and third episodes are much, much better. Instead of barely cracking a smile for the first half-hour, I laughed a few times in these subsequent shows.
Episode 2 brings SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’s Kristen Wiig as a woman who suspects her boyfriend is cheating on her, and few play “detached soul” for laughs as strong as she. The third deviates from the formula slightly, with no case for Jonathan to solve, instead giving him an opportunity to advance his writing career when Ray hooks him up with a screenplay polish for indie-film maverick Jim Jarmusch, who plays himself (to the hilt). Naturally, Jonathan finds a convoluted way to fuck it all up. Subplots include a herpes blister and a colonic.
On the basis of this initial trio of eps, I’m calling BORED TO DEATH a work in progress that shows promise, after a clumsy start. It’s asking for it by nearly living up to its title in the pilot, but it hits a significant incline from there, so give it a chance. Hell, in its first season, it took TRUE BLOOD about five episodes to find its footing, and look how that turned out. —Rod Lott
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Sounds like something I’d watch if I still got HBO. I wish they had kept that Andy Barker PI show on the air a couple years ago.
ANDY BARKER was an NBC show, but regardless, I wish it’d stayed on, too.
Yeah, I didn’t mean “they” as in HBO, but “they” as in The Powers That Be Who Determine Which TV Shows Stay On The Air And Which Ones Don’t.
Good to know about the improvement because if I saw the first episode this weekend and didn’t love it, I would probably drop the show.