S01.E13: Screw The Moon

[henripootel]

Gotta be honest, i am not liking all this shit he has to go trough, the characters are so bland compared to Phil that i end up not giving a shit about he almost trying to kill one of them,

Bingo.  Forte thinks so too:

"There’s a lot more I want to find out about all these characters, especially Mary Steenburgen’s character and Cleopatra’s and Boris’,” he says. “There’s very little we know about them and I’m excited to dive into that. And there’s so much we don’t know about Melissa and Todd. And Carol and Phil have been to there the longest and you still don’t know that much about them either."

This is for me the second biggest misstep for the first season.  The non-Phil Tandy characters are mostly just comedic gym equipment for Phil Tandy, set pieces for him to fuck/try to fuck/befriend/betray or whatever.  Just because this is a Will Forte vehicle doesn't mean that every other character (except Carol but often her too) has to be dry white toast.

So people who get bent out of shape by what a "monster" Phil is at times need to keep in mind that Forte never wanted to make a network comedy.

 

I (and I think others) aren't bothered by Phil Tandy being a 'monster', we're bothered by him being a boring monster.  Comedy is full of hapless villains, including many who succeed at the expense of 'good' characters.  That's not a problem.  The problem is that Phil Tandy predictably takes the stupidest, most venial, transparently self-serving tact on pretty much everything.  I realize that they're no new jokes under the sun but the trick is to come up with a non-obvious take on old material.  This is a good part of what makes something 'funny', and has little or nothing to do with making the character 'likable' or not.  

 

I think both of these spell 'bad writing', and I'm not moved from this by objections that amount to 'well, you're just not watching it correctly'.  While I agree with YMMV and the difficulty of analyzing comedy, I'm still stuck with 'not funny'.  I'm absolutely certain I can count the actual laughs I got out of this on one hand.  That's for the whole season.  I got more funny out of every one of Forte's brief appearances on 30 Rock, and re-watch them still.  I won't be re-watching this.  

Edited May 13, 2015 by henripootel

[editorgrrl]

The non-Phil Tandy characters are mostly just comedic gym equipment for Phil Tandy, set pieces for him to fuck/try to fuck/befriend/betray or whatever.  [And] Phil Tandy predictably takes the stupidest, most venial, transparently self-serving tact on pretty much everything. 

 

I think both of these spell 'bad writing', and I'm not moved from this by objections that amount to 'well, you're just not watching it correctly'.  While I agree with YMMV and the difficulty of analyzing comedy, I'm still stuck with 'not funny'. I won't be re-watching this.  

 

I agree with both your points, and I think it was a mistake to allow Will Forte run the show. (He's also the creator, star, head writer, and an executive producer.) Dan Sterling will be the showrunner for season 2, and an executive producer with Forte, Chris Miller, and Phil Lord.

 

I'm interested to see what changes Dan Sterling makes. According to Deadline, he has a sitcom in development at CBS with Miller and Lord, co-created/executive produced Sarah Silverman’s NBC comedy pilot, and was a consulting producer on HBO's Girls.

[henripootel]

I agree with both your points, and I think it was a mistake to allow Will Forte run the show. (He's also the creator, star, head writer, and an executive producer.) Dan Sterling will be the showrunner for season 2, and an executive producer with Forte, Chris Miller, and Phil Lord.

 

The funny thing, editorgrrl, is that one simple change might rectify all these problems: have Phil be the actual last man on earth.  All the other characters are crisis hallucinations, Phil's mind doing its desperate best to protect itself.  This would explain so much, the many coincidences (Carol showing up at the last possible second before Phil killed himself, New Phil just in time to save him), the fact that the other characters have pretty much no life outside of Phil's experience of them and seem none the worse for wear for having lived through every single person they knew dying, why the women seem like a man's take on women rather than actual women, even why the other characters both simplistically believe Phil and then simplistically hate him (because Phil hates himself in some ways and can only sustain so much fake character development).  

 

It would also mean that Phil's time with his balls are actually his lucid periods, which would make them so much more interesting and poignant.  I did kinda wonder if this was what they were going for all along and that, at the end, we'd see Phil leaving Tucson by himself, driving away from the freight of memories and illusions he'd built up there rather than confront the fact that he is really and truly alone.

 

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure Forte is going with Dick Phil.  Sigh.

Edited May 14, 2015 by henripootel

[editorgrrl]

One simple change might rectify all these problems: have Phil be the actual last man on earth.  All the other characters are crisis hallucinations, Phil's mind doing its desperate best to protect itself.  This would explain so much, Carol showing up at the last possible second before Phil killed himself, the fact that the other characters have pretty much no life outside of Phil's experience of them and seem none the worse for wear for having lived through every single person they knew dying, why the women seem like a man's take on women rather than actual women, even why the other characters both simplistically believe Phil and then simplistically hate him (because Phil hates himself in some ways and can only sustain so much fake character development).  

 

It would also mean that Phil's time with his balls are actually his lucid periods, which would make them so much more interesting and poignant.  I did kinda wonder if this was what they were going for all along and that, at the end, we'd see Phil leaving Tucson by himself, driving away from the freight of memories and illusions he'd built up there rather than confront the fact that he is really and truly alone.

 

As I said upthread:

I watch as if Tandy's hallucinating the whole thing. I've watched other shows that way, and sometimes I'm proven right

(Lost)

and sometimes everybody else seems to think I'm wrong.

(I think Walter White froze to death in that car.)

But it makes watching way more enjoyable for me.

 

I totally didn't think about Tandy's balls being the only "real" moments, though. Great catch! (See what I did there?)

[henripootel]

I totally didn't think about Tandy's balls being the only "real" moments, though. Great catch! (See what I did there?)

And I totally didn't see that you got there first - nice call.  I honestly don't see them actually going here but it would totally recast this show, and for my money make it watchable and maybe even spectacular.  So that's never gonna happen.

[editorgrrl]

I honestly don't see them actually going here but it would totally recast this show, and for my money make it watchable and maybe even spectacular.  So that's never gonna happen.

 

Why can't you watch the show as if Phil's the last man on earth? I've been doing it since the beginning. I'm doing it with Bates Motel, too.

(I think Bradley's a hallucination.)

Nothing I've seen on either show thus far disproves my headcanon.

[SlackerInc]

This show does consistently make me laugh.  In fact, it's probably the only non-sketch show currently airing that does so, unless you count the uncategorizable weirdness that is Review.

 

There are lines in this that my son and I quote to each other still and crack each other up.  Two of the best revolve around the same gag: "My favorite part?  Hmmm...probably when the shawshank, uh, was...redeemed" and <Morgan Freeman voice> "It truly was a shawshank redemption."  Or any of the times he tried to chime in and act as though he knew what they were going to say, by repeating it a half-beat after they did.  Oh, and Carol's "I threw up--want to see for proof?"  LMAO