Bored to Death (Season 1): The Review

Bored to Death (Season 1) [2009]

The Bored to Death Poster

So I normally do movie reviews every night, and I've actually already done a movie review for tonight, but those are not the only types of things I watch. As such, I figured I might as well branch out and include a couple of television shows I'm watching. Now, a thing about my reviews for television shows is that I do NOT want to write a review until I finish the season. Why? Because if I watch one episode and then write a review, I might not have gotten the true flavor of the television show that I didn't notice in just thirty minutes or less. For example, I did not realize the comedic value of the television show Arrested Development for the longest time. However, once I found it I could not stop laughing. So I feel it's important to give television shows a full season before they get judged.

Synopsis:

So this writer, Jonathan Ames (played by Jason Schwartzman) is working on writing his second novel, except he's currently having a huge problem with writers block. His girlfriend moves out of their place, his life feels meaningless, and his best friend, a comic book writer by the name of Ray Hueston (played by Zach Galifianakis), doesn't seem to help. So, slightly out of boredom and slightly out of finding an old novel in the pile of books in his apartment, he decides to spice up his life by putting an ad on Craig's List that says he's a private detective with very reasonable rates. He mentions in the ad that his is not licensed and takes that as the only way to tell people he in no way is related to crime solving. Well, he starts getting calls and from there the show takes on a detective sort of tone.

Except he's not a detective and he's anything but trained in being a good private eye. So the show focuses on his life and how he's not a detective. You meet his other buddy and mentor/boss, George Christopher (played by Ted Danson) and you see how he tries to piece his life back together with his friends, the detective business, and writing his story. So it becomes this complicatedly simple show about weird cases he solves while trying to do other things.

Verdict: 3.5 / 5 Stars

So I watched the whole first season and, if you read my synopsis, then you understand that this show could very much be interesting. Except the main character is kind of dull in his life and he's not very good with girls. I think that the creators really tried to play him up as a funny sort of guy, but he doesn't come off that way most of the time. And that's what really hurt this show if you asked me.

No, instead the actual BEST character on the show is his mentor/boss George. Now, the reason I really like George in this show is that he's this rich, lovable character with a background business that's respectable and yet he has all these weird problems that a rich person should never have. So from the first episode to the last episode he takes the side character roll and just makes it amazing. He's calling Jonathan in to go to parties with him, complaining about the complications in his life, and just all around getting into strange troubles that I found hilarious.

~~~~~Spoiler Alert~~~~~

For instance, he gets a herpes blister on his lip and he has a speech to go to and he does not want to show off the blister in public. Since there is no way out of doing the speech, his best idea is to call Jonathan in and ask Jonathan to punch him hard in the face so that it looks like he was in a battle. Now, standing back we can all see that this is not going to work, but the whole scenario plays out in such a dramatically hilarious style that I could not help but laugh at it. There's a bunch of others, and this isn't the funniest of what he does, but I thought I would mention it to give at least some sort of example.

~~~~~End Alert~~~~~

And beyond the best character, even Ray tends to be a little bit funnier than Jonathan. Ray has really weird problems and he talks about them like they are everyday issues, which is perfect for adding humor to the roll. But with that said, I don't think that either of the side-characters would have made a great front-roll character and are best where they stand now. So I'm going to leave it at that and just say that the two friends of Jonathan actually make the show.

Which means the only thing that could possibly make the show terrible are if the cases are bad or uninteresting. Some are less interesting than others, some are really funny ideas, but in the end it all sort of averages out to a decent case-listing in the show. So I'm not knocking it for having decent detective stories to tell, but I do have one problem with it. I like television shows that show progress with each episode, where if you missed the previous then you might not understand the details that go into the next. This show has none of that outside of a very large, very slow back story. I would have loved to see some cases not get solved and carry over a few episodes while he works others, I would have dies to see a master case that engulfs the whole season and he solves it little bit by little bit with each other case adding to the clues. I like mastermind stuff like that, the things that lead you on and then blow up to awesome proportions at the end. This sadly just doesn't have it. So that's a bit hurter.

Overall, the show did keep me entertained and I did manage to quickly and easily make it through the first season. If you want an extra show that is something you can watch while doing something else, this is probably it. I give it a 3.5/5 stars.