Preview, Review: BORED TO DEATH

By Norm Schrager at September 20, 2009 | 11:04 am | Print

How do you reinvent the 1990s slacker for the end of the 2000s? Yeah, he’d still approach life with a half-hearted, who-cares existentialism. Sure, he’d smoke too much dope and drink away the blues. He’d even be too mentally inert to go after his just-departed girlfriend. Meet Jonathan Ames, the protagonist of the snappy new HBO series Bored to Death, premiering this week.

Ames is identical in name (and many life details) to the show’s creator, who began imagining Bored to Death in early 2007 in a post-drug use fit of boredom. The series version of Jonathan — played dope-y and mopy by Jason Schwartzman, channeling some of his Wes Anderson roles — is a novelist who can’t get off the stick to write that second book.

His drinking and smoking (I love how the characters say “pot”) have driven away his lovely girlfriend Suzanne (Olivia Thirlby), and his occasional job for a super-rich publisher (Ted Danson, debonair and lonely) includes impromptu analysis sessions, and more smoking and drinking. Even his box of love notes to Suzanne suffers from ennui — “I’m literal-minded,” he reminds her.

Bored to Death Trailer

Feeling abandoned and uninspired after Suzanne’s departure, Jonathan dives into some Raymond Chandler and decides, on a moronic whim, to advertise on Craigslist as a “non-licensed” private investigator. Let the phone begin ringing…

Director Alan Taylor (Mad Men, The Sopranos) helms the first two episodes, embracing Ames’ creation, moving hangdog Jonathan through his paces and keeping Schwartzman on the edge of emotional neutrality… not that Schwartzman is the over-emoting type, so a burst of jealousy or excitement usually garners a hearty laugh. Even when Jonathan notes an “out-of-body experience,” we’re not too sure what it really means to him, and that slacker consistency is something to love about Bored to Death.

So is Zach Galifianakis, as the best buddy, a slovenly comic book artist with a Peter Pan complex, on the precipice of a dissolving romance himself. Galifianakis is lining himself up to be a funny, reliable foil — and a big star in the next couple of years.

So far, Jonathan’s “cases” have no mystery, and not even much need for insight. And that’s exactly the point. The challenge for this guy is simply to get moving and infuse his life with a little more, well, life. And to avoid tripping over New York City’s onslaught of parked baby strollers. The results are very smart and usually funny.

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