Splitsider

Do you laugh when a kid falls down? Does Law & Order SVU make you snicker? Do you find it funny when a UCLA student goes on an anti-Asian rant the week of the Japanese earthquake? Then you should probably be watching Showtime. Black comedy is a fine art, and few people are willing to take the risks to make it. Most people equate laughter with comedy, so it makes sense to look for jokes and funny situations in comedy shows. Shows like Community, 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live are hilarious, and filled with laugh-out-loud moments. And they do well. But somehow, Showtime has risen above the [...]

Infidelity! Car Wrecks! Break-Ups! Deception! All seen in last nights episode of Episodes. Combining genres is a tricky business. And it’s particularly difficult with comedies. Shameless, Parenthood and Nurse Jackie combine comedy and drama with ease. Shaun of the Dead and True Blood combine comedy and horror. And last night, Episodes created a new cross-genre for comedies; Melo-comedy. Sure, comedies usually go over the top with plot points and secondary characters for the sake of a laugh, but the latest episode of Episodes was more of a telenovela than a normal show.

I’d like to take a moment to apologize. I’ve avoided a huge, glaring issue about Episodes for the past two weeks in hopes that it would go away. But I simply can’t do it anymore. The two main characters of the show, Sean and Beverly Lincoln, are horrible. Their characters are horrible and the actors who play them are horrible. In my defense, I really did think the characters would have developed by now. If I blew off every character I didn’t like in the first episode based on how boring and awful they were, I would hate a lot of people that I now love. Felicity Huffman in [...]

Pilots are hard. Especially comedy pilots, and I do not envy those who have to write them. You have half an hour to win over an increasingly picky audience, explain the entire premise of your show, set up every character’s back story and be funny all at the same time. Rarely does this work. As an avid television viewer, I have made a conscious decision to always give a show two episodes to win me over, and I would have lost out on a lot of great series if I had judged every show by the first episode alone.

The pilot of Showtime’s new series Episodes aired last [...]

Good news for fans of Showtimes new Sunday night comedy (dramedy?) block: both Episodes and Shameless are coming back for another season.

It’s hard to make rape, ocular blindness and infidelity particularly funny, but the most recent episode of Episodes proved to be the funniest yet. Perhaps it’s because audiences have come to accept the more uncomfortable brand of humor, like The Office and Louie. The thing that all these shows have in common is the idea that you don’t have to have a punch line to be funny. While this episode wasn’t a laugh riot, per say, it was still the most absurd and amusing episode to date.

Matt LeBlanc is on a show! I wouldn’t have admitted it after the pilot episode of Episodes aired last week with a mere minute of airtime for LeBlanc. But in the second show, Matt finally shows up. And he’s not that bad; in fact, he may be the funniest part of Showtime’s most recent comedy series. And in this episode, we are introduced to two Matt LeBlanc’s.

It’s hard to imagine a show about the underbelly of Hollywood that doesn't fall into certain overused character conventions. And Episodes is no exception. That being said, writers Jeffrey Klarik (Dream On) and David Crane (co-creator of Friends) do a good [...]

I had high hopes for Episodes based on the initial trailer, but Alan Sepinwall's review over at Hitfix doesn't bode well for Showtime's new comedy series: "When you're attacking a big, fat target like the superficial, duplicitous nature of Hollywood, and being so relentless and bitter about it, you need to be much, much, much funnier than Episodes is. You need to be The Larry Sanders Show funny, or Extras season two funny. Episodes isn't even as funny as Crane and Klarik's last collaboration, the exceedingly mediocre short-lived CBS comedy The Class — and that's even considering that the new show features Crane's old Friends star Matt LeBlanc [...]

It marked the end of the season for Episodes last night. It also marked the first episode where I actually liked the main character. Like a movie that doesn’t make sense till the last five minutes, it took seven episodes of this show for me to finally like Sean and Beverly. And, like the hypothetical movie, I found myself thinking “Oh no, why is it over?” It’s as though the first six episodes of this show were all practice rounds for what was a very good episode. And now it’s over.

Without a second season pick up yet for Episodes, it’s hard to gauge what the season finale [...]

“I’m fucking full of whimsy.” Matt LeBlanc utters this line in defense of a Peter Pan reference he makes while drunk. What’s ironic about this dialogue is that Matt LeBlanc in Episodes really is whimsical. It’s his playful character choices that sell every episode. Matt LeBlanc carries this show. And not just with the comedic beats. LeBlanc brings a level of realism to a somewhat unrealistic cast of characters. Surprising when you remember that he’s playing the actor in a behind the scenes show, a character that is usually the most outrageous and narcissistic. Not to say that LeBlanc doesn’t embody some of the stereotypes of actors; he’s rich, [...]

Earlier this week, Showtime aired the premieres of Californication, now in its fourth season, and the brand new show Episodes. For years, the network barely bothered with comedy, but lately, with the rise of HBO, they’ve been trying to make shows beyond Dexter and The L Word, shows that will actually make you laugh. But how are they doing compared to their main competitor (sorry, Starz)? Let's pit Showtime and HBO's current five best comedies against one another and see who comes out on top.

Here's the first trailer for Showtime's upcoming comedy Episodes. Created by Friends co-creator David Crane, it stars Matt LeBlanc as himself, an actor known for one role trying to make a comeback. Kind of like former Friends castmate Lisa Kudrow's The Comeback! Too many layers!

If that description turns you off, what with Matt LeBlanc and the co-creator of friends making a show about a struggling actor being a bit too Joey-like, give the trailer a chance. It actually looks pretty great. It's more Curb Your Enthusiasm Hollywood than Joey Hollywood, and LeBlanc looks like he's playing the role with enough self-awareness and mockery to make it work. It'll [...]