Monday, August 22, 2005

TV: Starved and Philadelphia, Part 2

Since I wrote about their pilot episodes, I've watched two more episodes each of Starved and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Both, surprisingly, have improved since the pilots, but only Philadelphia has really grown on me.

Starved has gotten a few more laughs out of me since that first episode, but I still don't care for any of the four main characters. And it certainly isn't because this is a show where you're not supposed to like the characters, like, say, Ricky Gervais on The Office or Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm; they'd rather be the guys who do jerky things, but are still somehow loveable, more like on Seinfeld. I mean, this last episode was just begging the audience to love these characters, with Billie breaking down in tears, Dan estranged from his wife and moved in with Adam, who has been pretending to have a girlfriend so that he can be alone to indulge his food-disorder compulsions (binging and purging), and Sam being there to give moving pep talks to both Dan and Billie. I don't care for the characters -- except maybe Billie, who is, so far, the least awful of the four -- and the show still strives too hard to be edgy and offensive -- the last episode featured Sam injuring his scrotum during a grooming mishap -- but I will admit they've mustered up a few laughs here and there. It's not a must for me, but I don't see any harm in continuing to watch. (Also, I really get a kick out of the fact that Evie from Out of This World plays Dan's wife.)

The real winner has turned out to be It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It appears FX agrees with me; after following Starved the first two weeks, this last week Philadelphia took over the lead-in spot, which indicates higher ratings, or at least a higher level of faith and/or enthusiasm from FX's programmers.

The cast may be a bunch of nobodies (though at least they've finally gotten their names listed on the show's IMDb page), and, yes, they're also an unlikeable crew of characters. But they've won me over in a way Starved has failed to do. First of all, they just seem to gel together as an ensemble much more cohesively than that of Starved. They play off each other well, building on and trumping one another's lines, demonstrating a comedic give-and-take that works very nicely. And while the humor still goes for awkwardness and controversy, for some reason the subjects of the last two shows (titled "Charlie Wants an Abortion" and "Underage Drinking: A National Concern") didn't drive me away as much as the pilot episode ("The Gang Goes Racist"). Probably because I'm exactly the kind of uptight white guy they were trying to needle with their humor in the debut.

The four lead characters are all insensitive doofuses who always make the wrong choices (even the one female, Dee, who is normally the voice of reason, but who nonetheless decides to date a high school jock in the "Underage Drinking" episode), but they're funny doofuses. It's often a mean funny; the characters, though best friends, will frequently tear each other to pieces (topped off with "Are you gonna cry now?"); when Dee accepts the high school jock's invitation to his prom, Charlie repeatedly crows to her brother Dennis, "That guy is totally gonna bang your sister!" And the meanness isn't limited to one another; when Charlie (whose sudden, outraged freak-outs have made him my favorite of the four) discovers he may have a son, and that the kid is completely rotten, he instantly sinks to the kid's level. "You're ugly," the kid tells him. "YOU'RE UGLY!!" Charlie screams back, not caring that he's in the middle of the mall.

They can be mean characters who do mean things (for example, Dennis makes up his mind on abortion according to which group of competing protesters has the hottest women), but they often fail to be better people in very recognizable ways. And when all is said and done, I wouldn't mind having a drink with them in the Irish pub they own. (I think.) On the other hand, I would never want to share a drink -- or even worse, a meal -- with the characters of Starved.

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