Jesus Dristos is a superstar! Whoo! Have you heard of something like S-C-A-C-C-E? Nope? I read about him somewhere, like I watched a couple of snotty TV shows, but I never met him. Or I did, but I didn't. Or noticed, but didn't get it. It is difficult with him in general, with this happiness. It's an inconstant quantity. You bastard, you don't give in to empirical measurements. Not calculated, you bastard, by a priori probability. So many people died in his search that I do not want to remember, and a single recipe was never invented. So a man with a funny name - Shalom Oslander, having torn his ass to pieces in the foul-smelling world of advertising, began to comprehend this phenomenon. Yes, not just engaged, but set up a script application for the sitcom and ran with her in Showtime.
We have the Payne family downtown. Their surname is fully justified, because these guys from series to series experience a colossal burning sensation just below their backs, while managing to be a full-fledged, provided unit of society. A true example of a family living in harmony with each other. Mom and dad are in love, do not even think about divorce, and their six-year-old son Julius, who grows up in idyll, is certainly not without his teenage quirks, but also quite a healthy personality. What, I ask, is interesting about this story, where everything is fine? The fact that these three are not happy in principle.
Tom is a loving father and husband, a creative director of 44 years (read, a typical white dude), stubbornly resisting modern trends, trying to feed his family and cherishing a blue dream that one day he will retire to a secluded place and write a Book. But not now. Now he feels younger advertisers in tight jeans, with shaved temples and apple devices on their heels. A red line through his midlife crisis is the question: "How much of a scumbag do you have to be these days to not lose your job, and how much do you have to bend down so that such a threat does not arise at all?"
Lee is Tom’s wife, who was born into a devout Jewish family, where he never for a second forgot about the hardships of his people and raised his daughter in accordance with religion. She is now a housewife and a freelance artist, not least because of her fierce hatred for her exhausted mother, from whom she now protects her family. #איהיהיй
This multifaceted, witty, and hooligan tragicomedy touches on a vast number of topics (read, the tag cloud) faced by today’s middle-aged whites. The story, starting with the fact that the main character, backing up the words with his middle finger, sends Thomas Jefferson to three letters with his passage about the right to life, freedom and the notorious pursuit of happiness, manages to keep his rough charm until the final credits of the last series. The authors do not hesitate to call things by their proper names, and therefore the main characters, in my opinion perfectly performed by Steve Coogan and Katherine Khan, look real, familiar. Ten series about the lives of spouses who grew up during the X generation, with the corresponding habits, views and lifestyle, who once became parents and lost that cherished measure of freedom.
Especially valuable is that the narrative is diluted with small, sometimes animated sketches. They are cynical, sharply contrast with the general mood, and sum up the thoughts of the main characters in a single bright image, which with special audacity tries to fuck the side of your brain that is responsible for figurative thinking. This is one of the funniest scenes of the series.
An important argument in favor of this project, at least for me, was the news that in the pilot series for the role of Tom was claimed by the notorious Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died prematurely in 2014. An actor of this class wouldn't be willing to go for shit, for the record. The character is actually complex, and Coogan coped with it a hundred times. In general, a low bow to the entire cast. Laughter through tears and vice versa – the merit is not only titular actors.
I do not recommend happy people to watch it. Suffering from bouts of snobbery and those whose feelings may be offended, all the more so. The rest of you, have a good look. This thing will play rock 'n' roll on your soul strings.