Episodes (2011-2017) [TV-MA] ****/*****

A film review by Emily Nussbaum for The New Yorker, July 9, 2012.

For a different take on sitcoms, try Episodes, now entering its second season, on Showtime. Episodes uses sleek, standard joke structures: it resembles shows like Friends and Mad About You, which the creators, David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik, helped run. But Episodes has a sly subversiveness that deepens over time, like mercury poisoning: it’s an adult farce that is at once frothy and acerbic. It’s a bit like what HBO’s Veep seems intended to be, but with greater affection for its characters.

In the first season, a British screenwriting couple, Sean and Beverly Lincoln (Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig), arrive in Hollywood to remake their sophisticated hit sitcom for Americans - an easy payday, they imagine. Instead, they find themselves destabilized by smiling liars, deluged by network notes, and overseeing the development of Pucks!, a terrible sitcom that stars Matt LeBlanc (who plays a version of himself) as a hockey coach. Worse, their marriage topples, upended by a Los Angeles culture they’d imagined themselves entirely superior to.

In part, the couple learn how quickly you can become what others see in you. Greig is outstanding as the witty Beverly, who finds herself curdling into Hollywood’s view of her: the nagging bitch. Meanwhile, her husband transforms into LeBlanc’s wingman, and, in a structure as cunning as a Chekhov play, the gun that flashes in the first act - LeBlanc’s enormous penis - goes off in the finale. Startlingly but convincingly, Beverly sleeps with LeBlanc. How did this happen? She despises you, Sean tells the actor bitterly, recognizing what amounts to a long con. You must’ve had to try so bloody hard. What a conquest. Then the phone rings, and the threesome find that their pilot has been picked up.

When Season 2 begins, the Lincolns have separated. The writers lay out a set of silky, farcical fuses, as they did last season, and nearly all ignite (though one or two fizzle). The best of these sharp, dark stories involves the show’s secret weapon, Kathleen Rose Perkins, who plays Carol Rance, the executive producer of Pucks! A stoner in a suit, and the mistress of the network’s president, Carol has a chipper, anxious smile that stretches across her face like a rubber band, snapping at moments of stress. She’s self-centered and endlessly willing to debase herself, but she’s also the only one who cares about making a hit show that’s any good - a quixotic desire, but, in network television, a perverse form of heroism. [Nussbaum’s rating: 80]

Blogger’s note: Hilarious, simply hilarious. Episodes ran for five seasons, the years and number of episodes in each season: 2011 (7), 2012 (9), 2014 (9), 2015 (9), 2017 (7), for a total of 41 episodes.

Labels: comedy, cross-cultural, filmmaking
IMDb (78/100)
MetaScore (critics=74, viewers=NA) 
RottenTomatoesAverages (critics=80, viewers=89) 
AmazonPrime, iTunes, Netflix, Vudu (7.28)