Round Two: I Love Dick

I Love Dick: Season 1, Episode 2 “The Conceptual Fuck” (C-)

I had mostly forgotten about this show since I watched the erratic premiere back in August, though I had seen that it was being featured as part of the Tribeca TV section of the Tribeca Film Festival last month. I just remembered that it didn’t do much for me, and was yet another instance of the amazing Kathryn Hahn not quite finding the right role for her talents, constantly attached to projects Jill Soloway created. After an intensely sexual and explicit opening, this episode was all over the place, with not much to keep it all together. Kevin Bacon’s Dick is an enigma of sorts but also a much less interesting character than he’s made out to be, and I’m finding this show to be extremely inaccessible, uninviting, and at times downright boring. I don’t think I even have enough to say about it to fill an entire review, other than that its title continues to be a point of contention, since it’s the kind of thing that you don’t want to say too loud in a public place for fear of being either overly explicit or inappropriate, and while it does accurately define its protagonist’s unhealthy obsession with another character, it feels all too attention-grabbing with not nearly enough payoff. Given the greatness of “Transparent,” admittedly a show that was fantastic from the start and didn’t have to get good, I think I might owe this show a third visit, but given how much this installment turned me off, I can’t imagine coming back for more after that.