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“Episodes’” Matt LeBlanc: Oversexed, over-entitled, eternally on “Friends”

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 15:58:00 +0000

Showtime’s “Episodes,” which began its second season last night, is a sitcom about the making of a bad sitcom — and not just because that is its plot. In the show’s first season, British couple Beverly and Sean brought their clever British comedy about an erudite school teacher to Los Angeles, only to supervise as it was pummeled and ground into a mediocre show called “Pucks!” starring Matt LeBlanc as a hockey coach. The witty, salty, underprepared pair discovered they were no match for the forces of Hollywood, acquiescing to make a series neither could be proud of while irrevocably damaging their marriage when Beverly hate-slept with LeBlanc. As season two begins, Sean and Beverly are civilly, almost normally working together while she waits for his forgiveness, and they continue to churn out a show they both know, at best, is an inoffensive piece of crap.

“Episodes,” which comes from “Friends” co-creator David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik, is about how smart people with great intentions end up making something middling. This is not a particularly original storyline (see, everything from “Network” to “The TV Set”), and its very banality suggests what is keeping “Episodes” itself from being a great sitcom: The show is not just about the struggle between the good and the mediocre, it is itself a struggle between the good and the mediocre.

The problems with “EXTREME COUPONING”

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 18:47:00 +0000

I am very confused by the concept of "EXTREME COUPONING," a new show premiering on TLC tomorrow. First: Why all the caps? Stop yelling at me! Also, this title makes it seem like reality programming has run out of neuroses to gawk at. Because there are lot of things out there that are EXTREME -- mountain biking, mountain climbing, Mountain Dew -- but cutting out coupons to save some money (or even a BUNCH of money) on shampoo is not one of them.

Apparently this show has already had a one-hour online premiere in December, and if you've already seen it, I am sorry to be so completely baffled this late in the game. If, however, you somehow missed the Internet premiere -- maybe because you were too busy trying to sift your way through giant dumpsters in order to find old newspapers to clip -- here's a preview of what to expect from the show.

What makes Matt LeBlanc’s new show so good

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 15:04:00 +0000

Showtime's comedy series "Episodes" (Sundays 9:30 p.m./8:30 Central), about a married team of English TV producers shooting a pilot in Hollywood, could not have premiered at a worse moment. Because the 2011 mid-season was lousy with American remakes of English series ("Shameless," "Skins," "Being Human"), "Episodes" got lumped in with actual imports and treated as supplemental material -- as a commentary on the pitfalls of adaptation rather than a worthwhile show in its own right. On top of that, it's yet another show populated by showbiz types who seem ordinary if you work in Hollywood, but whose lives are so far removed from most people's daily realities that they might as well be spies or astronauts. And while the inside-showbiz genre spawned a few notable programs (the brutal, brilliant "The Larry Sanders Show" and "The Comeback"; the uneven but fascinating "Unscripted"), most of them, even the solidly funny ones, felt as navel-gazing and self-satisfied as slide shows of somebody else's luxury vacation. Every producer who debuts this sort of series insists it's really not an inside-showbiz comedy, but a comedy about characters that just happen to work in show business -- and nine times out of 10, they're lying.