11.23.11
The Funniest Television Show That (Almost) No One is Watching
I’m going to depart from my usual commentary to offer an endorsement of what I believe to be the best television show that (almost) no one is watching: HBO’s The Life and Times of Tim. While fact that the show’s third season premieres next month suggests that it has at least some fans I think that it’s still fair to suggest, at least using the Pauline Kael-standard of judgement (I don’t know anyone who watches the show, except for people I have specifically introduced to it), that its fan base is much, much smaller than it deserves to be. In light of this I feel that it is fitting and proper that I depart from my usual hobby of prophesying the end of the world unless my advice is heeded in order to get some more people to watch a show I really love.
“There’s no transitive property in having a slutty wife,” one character explains to another in response to his excitement at discovering that the man cuckolding him is an NHL player in one second season episode. If you don’t see the inherent humor in that line, the show probably isn’t for you. Created by Steve Dildarian, a former ad writer, the show is the story of Tim and his co-workers, friends, and acquaintances. Most of the problems in the life of twenty-something Tim (actually, I believe that Tim is twenty-five. I was initially going to fudge that belief for whatever reason, but there you go) are entirely self-inflicted, the result of his chronic inability to stand up for himself and his willingness to go along with the insanity of most of the world around him despite the fact that he’s just smart enough to see that he’s being taken on a road to disaster. “I don’t like where this is headed,” he’ll often comment as he’s being dragged from one fiasco to another.
I’ll tell you up front that the show probably isn’t for everyone. Several people who I’ve tried to sell on its virtues have been turned off by its poor animation quality. Others have a problem with the fact that much of the humor on the show is frankly deeply cynical and, well, kind of sadistic.
Take, for example, the second segment from the show’s pilot (each episode is broken into two short stories). Tim’s brash co-worker Rodney rents out a club to throw a bachelor party, but only Tim and his friend Stu show up because Rodney, as it turns out, is generally detested by everyone that he knows. Taking pity upon Rodney, Tim agrees to help make up stories of how wild the party was in order to make everyone who didn’t come feel bad that they missed it (with Stu agreeing to go along because he doesn’t “give a shit”). However, they fail to agree upon a story for Tim that evening, resulting in Tim coming into work the next day to find out that the story that they made up for him was that he got drunk and was raped by a bum on the grounds that that sounds like something that might happen to him. Tim then spends the rest of the segment first unsuccessfully attempting to convince people that the story is a lie and then, having decided that going along is the easier path, has the truth exposed by two NYPD officers who then coerce him into going on “60 Minutes” to play the role of a victim for a segment on “Bum Rape.”
Personally, I think that the above is hilarious (and the original segment – based upon a previous animated short that Dildarian created with the premise “what happens when your girlfriend comes home before your hooker leaves?” is great too) but, I can see how it’s not for everyone. Another wonderful segment features Tim and Stu going to see an eponymous “Unjustly Neglected Drama” from the 40’s that is described as being, “like an Arthur Miller play, but much slower.” Again, wonderful in my opinion, but if you have a hard time in seeing the humor in that, the show probably isn’t for you.
Yet, as I have emphasized that this is – and will always be – a divisive show, it’s still one that absolutely deserves to find a much larger audience than it has. Personally, I think that the show’s smart humor, unalloyed by the sort of false sentiment that is slathered on most other television shows, captures the spirit of the age better than anything else on television.
Adam Yoshida is a Vancouver-based blogger and the author of “The Blast of War.”
