I don’t exactly understand why The Comedians exists. In fact, I just have questions: is FX expecting a showbiz satire, in the vein of poorly-rated cable companions like The Comeback and Episodes, to do good business? Would critics really go for a watered-down generational Hollywood comedy without much of a target? Is there a Josh Gad fan club I don’t know about?
Predictably, The Comedians is a curious beast flying under-the-radar. It’s too mild and competent to be an object of hatred or even disappointment, but its humor is too thin and its satire too toothless to make any kind of major positive impression. And yet, this is what’s so strange about it: the big deal that it (and FX) seems to think of itself as. The insider’s humor is layered like a wedding cake, with references to its stars’ body of work remarkably frequent and impressively integrated. Plus, here you have Billy Crystal leading a TV show, with Larry Charles directing and Mel Brooks guest starring. There’s a pedigree and an established relationship with the audience that indicates a certain level of expectations. But for what? Who is The Comedians really for?
Over six episodes, FX’s mockumentary half-hour has appreciably improved, and it’s in a groove right now that’s innocently pleasant. Mostly, its meta-level humor is clever enough where I’ll nod my head approvingly, but it’s far from incisive or boisterously funny. It is pleasant. Billy Crystal and Josh Gad seem to be having a ball playing versions of themselves, tasked by a fictional John Landgraf stand-in (played well by Denis O’Hare) to join forces and produce a sketch comedy show. The amount of references to The Book of Mormon, Frozen, 1600 Penn, Crystal’s Oscar gigs, and Analyze This, That and the other is staggering. If there’s one thing the show deserves credit for, it’s so densely sticking in points of reference to these projects without it seeming like overkill. Eventually, they amusingly hang in the backdrop as we wait for Gad or Crystal or some clever set-piece to deliver the latest gag.
There’s also something to be said for the way it has naturally developed the relationship between Billy and Josh. In early episodes, their dynamic is fairly grating: Josh behaves ridiculously inappropriately, and Billy smirks, and Josh somehow exponentiates the awfulness, and then we move on. It serves The Comedians better when they’re on equal footing, and the show seems to finally understand this. By episode six, they’re both a-little-bit-racist. They’re both insensitive to their crew members. And their banter, too, is nicely-balanced. It’s safe to assume that Crystal has eased in vanity and self-protection, as his character, at least, has loosened up considerably. It’s to the show’s benefit, and really, to Crystal’s as well.
But to get back to that idea of purpose, The Comedians is still trying to locate an avenue for pointed, effective and weighty humor. Its most recent episode cleverly addressed this idea with Elvis Mitchell (playing himself) actually, directly asking our characters point-blank, “Isn’t comedy supposed to be political?” They stutter, and it’s a smart moment of self-reflection, but the show doesn’t do anything about it. Billy and Josh turn hellbent on hiring a black writer to prove that they’re not racist, but the engagement peters out. (Because, again, The Comedians itself has an all-white writing staff and cast. Clever-clever.)
The humor goes more political here, but it also doesn’t; the characters turn buffoonish and nonsensical, far beyond the types we’d come to know in the previous five episodes. Moreover, they undo most of the episode’s supposedly pointed work by firing the black writer. He wasn’t a good fit -- Billy and Josh prioritized diversity over who was right for the job, and so even if the writer they hired was talented, he was a little too aggressive for this show. And in an unintentionally discomforting moment, the new writer, Ron, actually lashes out at producer Christine (Stephnie Weir) for having a worse parking space than the white writers. He scolds, “So separate but equal?” She clearly isn’t giving him a raw deal -- the show is way over budget, and he is the newest writer who thus didn’t have a previously-allocated space -- and so the whole scenario plays out as icky.
It’s indicative of a larger problem the show has, which is relatively simple and yet seriously problematic: being funny. Despite the witty demonstration that came with the show’s admission of, well, whiteness, it was yet another example of the show failing to translate that into anything substantially, richly funny. The Comedians seems to be weaving through different approaches and identities, moving on when it realizes something isn’t landing. There’s been generational comedy, Hollywood satire, workplace shenanigans and a touch of social provocation. But it’s not cohesive, mainly because, comedically, nothing has really worked. Three times in six episodes (by my count; there may be more), the show has done the following: person is on speaker phone, asks to be put on hold, says something they probably shouldn’t have without realizing they failed to actually put the person on hold. It hasn’t been funny once. Similarly, the show spent a few minutes per episode with Portia, the lazy and unmotivated assistant, to absolutely no return. She’s been even less present in the past few episodes, likely because her stuff made no sense in context, and didn’t induce a single laugh anyway.
Which gets to the broader question: what is the point of The Comedians? It’s a far better show than Episodes, but even that has a clear intent with a comedic target, however broad. The Comeback is a Hollywood satire that digs in unsparingly and intensely. The Comedians, conversely, seems uncomfortable in nearly every area it’s skirted around.
The series’ interludes consist of actual sketches from the “Billy & Josh Show,” and they are awful. They’re insultingly unfunny, and I’m not sure that the show is aware of that. But either way, they reflect the show’s own issue: the sketches have no target or purpose, and the humor is embarrassingly strained as a result. (Again, maybe it’s a reflection of the show’s own lack of intent, to which I would say this show is only getting weirder.) The only bursts of real, lively comedic energy come from Stephnie Weir. She’s an ingenious physical comedian and a fascinatingly odd presence. I long for her to show up in every episode. But she’s in a completely different show, one that, yes, is sort of aimless too, but has the guts to be weird and strange and legitimately unique. Taken with Billy and Josh, The Comedians is a mish-mash of curiosities that is enjoyable enough to watch, but still isn’t adding up to much.
Grade: B-