I Like to Watch

Crude, rude, disheveled and horny: From Showtime's "Californication" to HBO's "Entourage" and "The Life & Times of Tim," once again we're in the company of men behaving badly.

By Heather Havrilesky

Read more: TV, Arts & Entertainment, Heather Havrilesky, I Like to Watch

Sept. 28, 2008 | Beers, rock 'n' roll, poker, cigarettes, pot, porn, cocaine, hotel rooms, whores, heroin, adultery, rehab. As we grapple with post-9/11 global chaos and a ballooning financial apocalypse, somehow the typical trajectory of the party animal seems almost quaint in its pointlessness. With the world falling to pieces, who has the energy to indulge their most decadent urges? What sad little human still hungers for that quick surge of jet fuel for the ego that comes from cheap sex, driving music and mind-altering drugs? As the sun sets on a gilded age, these look like the extracurricular activities of the spiritually and emotionally flaccid.

"But it feels good!" you protest, like a slow child with his fist stubbornly planted in the middle of his mom's fresh-baked blueberry pie. Even so, when seen in the rearview mirror a few years down the road, ashtrays and smelly dive bars and glasses of hard liquor and whoring sea donkeys just look like a splitting headache and an unnervingly itchy crotch. Our collapsing nation demonstrates the net results of doing what feels good with reckless abandon: You wake up one morning feeling very, very bad. Uncle Sam, that poor old hedonist, plumped up his ego with cheap thrills until he was a shattered, stinky shadow of his former self.

On TV, though, fickle men and their trashy urges are still supposed to be funny and not tragic. Soulless and smug, they follow their desires into one lewd and humiliating situation after another, yet we're meant to love them in spite of great faults. The assumption that these characters will appeal to mainstream Americans should probably be blamed on a handful of middle-aged creative executives in Hollywood, surrounded by hot aspiring actresses and trophy wives but still painfully aware of their fading sex appeal. Little do they know that most American men aren't half as depraved as they are.

Badly drawn boy
If you figure out exactly who is supposed to enjoy HBO's "The Life & Times of Tim" (premieres 11 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 28) -- beyond the easily amused humans who created it -- please let me know. An animated comedy that's horribly illustrated and poorly written, the show focuses on the loserly conduct of Tim, a so-called average guy who's not remotely interesting, appealing or even mildly amusing.

Created by comedian Steve Dildarian, who's described on the HBO Web site as "the Clio-winning ad man behind Budweiser's famous 'Lizards' campaign," "The Life & Times of Tim" begins with a scene that feels like a nonsensical, toothless parody of "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Tim's live-in girlfriend comes home with her parents to find Tim with a hooker. Apparently Tim called the hooker at 9 a.m. and asked for the "backdoor special" but when the act was done he didn't have the money to pay for it. Tim's girlfriend expresses her outrage, her parents make meatloaf, the hooker sits down to dinner with them, all the while requesting that she get paid, and soon Maurice the pimp enters, threatening to dismember Tim. If that doesn't make any sense, then you're on the right track: It's almost impossible to do justice to how weak and groan-inducing the whole thing is or how few jokes there are in the mix. The fact that no one at a development meeting for this show spoke up and said, "Um, shouldn't we at least hire an animator who draws really well, so no one notices that there aren't any jokes here?" hints at a disturbingly brainless, "Emperor's New Clothes" group dynamic over at HBO.

But it gets worse. In the second episode, Tim goes to a crappy bachelor party where only two other guys show up: the groom and another guy from work. The trio decides to tell everyone at work stories about how great the party was, so that the bachelor doesn't have to feel quite as pathetic.

The next day, Tim discovers that the other guys told everyone at work that he was raped by a homeless guy the night before. His boss sends him to Human Resources to talk to a counselor about his traumatic experience, then he ends up at the police station trying to I.D. the homeless guy who raped him. Yes, things go from crazy to even crazier, all in the absence of even the smallest chuckle.

This summer at the television critics press tour, HBO executives justified their ever-weakening flow of quality shows by explaining that, with so many cable networks in the mix, the market for good shows is more competitive than it's ever been. But let's get real: HBO was the dream destination for the best writers in Hollywood a few years ago. They went to HBO first, and hoped that HBO would love them with reckless abandon. They knew that HBO carried with it a lot of prestige, plus there were things you could do on premium cable that you couldn't do anywhere else.

The obvious fact is that HBO squandered that opportunity in the wake of Chris Albrecht's (speaking of men behaving badly) departure. I suppose it's unfair not to applaud the renewal of "In Treatment" and "Flight of the Conchords." I'm just amazed to discover that HBO would even dream of picking up a horrible animated version of the supremely awful "Mind of the Married Man" years later. Sadly, "The Life & Times of Tim" isn't even as well written as that show, and it's far more amateurish and deeply, alarmingly stupid to boot. Fair viewer, I would encourage you to TiVo this crappy show just so we can marvel at its awfulness together. Yes, it's that bad.

Next page: The ill-considered dalliances of a self-destructive character