Thursday, May 21, 2015

What I’m Watching: Happyish


Happyish: Season 1, Episode 4 “Starring Sigmund Freud, Charles Bukowski and Seven Billion Assholes” (B)

In describing this show, I can’t decide whether I’d most emphasize its strangeness or its darkness. Having both of its main characters run towards a window when they saw a spaceship and wave their arms frantically, shouting “Wait! Come back! I don’t belong here!” signals truly unhappy people, those who jokingly imagine that they must be from another planet because they’re not like the other seven billion assholes on earth. That’s strange, though not any more so than sex dreams about Keebler elves or violent Dora the Explorer cartoons. But then there’s the quoting of the book that’s supposed to dwarf “Mein Kampf” in terms of its serious Nazi doctrine (Cheney read that, Bush read “Mein Kampf), which Jonathan used apparently for the third time in as many months to pitch a concept to a client. It’s not as if either Thom or Gottfrid is much more positive, but at least they’re not pitching Naziism as a comparable brand to Coca-Cola. Gottfrid interrupting the meeting to compare them to terrorists wasn’t too bright either, and it’s going to be hard for this company to stay afloat with its three biggest talking heads competing with each other for who can be the most depressing and dismal. There wasn’t much of a satisfying resolution, but I did like that Lee refused to cave and called Fitzgerald an asshole to his mother. Julius is an odd kid, sure, but there’s no way that he’s the bully in this situation, just someone who was encouraged by his parents to fight back to teach his tormentor a lesson.

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