Monday, October 10, 2011

Small Screen: Bored to Death Season Premiere


-- Robert Acosta


Season 3, Episode 1: "The Blonde in the Woods"

Being one of my favorite shows, I was immensely looking forward to the season premiere. And I am happy to say that Episode 1 was fantastic!

The season starts with all the characters in a book store, filled with customers waiting to buy Johnathan's new book. As a stunt, he's been nailed to spinning wheel, having someone throw knifes at him. Nothing has really changed. Funny stuff happening right from the get go.

Each character is already on their separate stories, split into small chunks of time in the episode. You follow Johnathan on another case that turns out to be a frame for murder that he is right in the middle of. In fact, after he's been knocked down, he hilariously wakes up to find that he's been framed. A storyline to be stretched out into other episodes.

Ray, played by the still funny Zach Galifianakis, has some interesting things going on in life. He has found his way back into Leah's life. He reveals that he donated his sperm to a sperm bank and that he is to meet his son soon. He is considerably nervous but him revealing that news causes Johnathan's parents to reveal a very funny, but shocking news about Johnathan. Hint: Sperm is involved.

Ray meets his son and the scenes with him and his toddler son are hilarious and are definitely some of the funnier moments of the series already. Parenthood isn't easy but Galifianakis makes it look so damn funny.

George meets with his daughter and her boyfriend who turns out to be a little older than George both expects and can accept. He becomes extremely uncomfortable when his daughter and her boyfriend start smooching in front of him and to relieve his "sorrows", goes and gets hammered at the bar.

The episode ends in a cliffhanger...literally. Johnathan is still being framed for murder, and heads back to his apartment, trying to figure the situation out. The cops follow him there, leading Johnathan to go outside of his very high apartment and hang from the huge old school clock on the building. Now, I live in Brooklyn and I live right in the area where they shoot most of these scenes, and he may literally be hanging from the clock tower on Flatbush Avenue.

Overall, I laughed a lot during the episode. I feel like we're in for a real treat with this season and of course, being an HBO series, a lot of effort will be put into it.

I always feel like the character Jason Schwartzman plays gets over-shadowed by Zack Galifianakis and Ted Danson, but it still makes for one of the best shows/comedies on TV.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

No comments:

Post a Comment