Bored to Death: Season 1

If there was a benefit to me assembling chairs and barstools until four in the morning last night - a benefit beyond having functional furniture, I mean - it's that I was finally able to beast my way through the second half of the first season of Bored to Death, a show I've struggled to find time to watch since the big move.

This strikes me as one of HBO's lesser known efforts, so here's the quick rundown. The show ran for three seasons from 2009-2011 and starred Jason Schwartzman, Zach Galifianakis, and Ted Danson. The basic premise is that a writer, Jonathsan (Schwartzman), has just endured a break-up and, seeking something new and different to distract himself from the heartbreak, posts an ad on Craigslist purporting to be a private detective for hire. His reasoning is that he's read plenty of noir detective novels before, and can thus do a decent job. His friend (Galifianakis), a struggling cartoonist in a sexless relationship, serves as his driver and often unwilling accomplice. Lastly, his boss from his magazine job (Danson) is a twice-divorced well-to-do guy in his mid-sixties who is just game for anything, from drinking to smoking pot to joining in on the private detective shenanigans as soon as he learns about his employee's night time activities.

That's really pretty much it, and the simplicity and wide openness of this set up allow . Most episodes so far have revolved around Jonathan accepting a case of some kind and attempting to solve it like the amateur he is. Sometimes he succeeds and sometimes he fails; sometimes he's genuinely good at what he's doing and other times he's woefully incompetent. There's no real formulaic feel to any of it, and each episode feels very organic and situational. I mean, it's all right there in the show's title - these three guys are just plain bored, each of them looking for a distraction or an escape from the rest of their lives.

The strength of the show, I guess, is just how genuine it feels. This isn't a gut-busting comedy that goes for guffaws, and it isn't mean spirited in the least. It's just sort of pleasant to be around. The first few episodes didn't really suck me right in, but it's show that slowly grows on you, and one where I can look back at the first season and consider the whole as greater than the sum of its parts - a rarity for such an episodic and non-serial show. There's great dialogue, of course, as any "show about nothing" needs to have pretty much by default. All three lead performances are great, with Schwartzman and Galifianakis essentially sharing the role of the straight man to all of Ted Danson's scene-stealing charismatic willingness. Danson's character is somehow unlike anything I can recall seeing on TV before. He's neither egotistical nor pitiful, and he's not a snarky wiseass or a crazy old man. He's just game for anything, in an excited but relatively calm way. In a lot of ways he seems like a much more grounded version of Sealab 2021's Captain Murphy, one of my all time favorite comedic characters from any medium.

I digress, but yeah. So far, so good, and I look forward to the second and third seasons of this one.