Togetherness is a pretty familiar show. Couple has troubles, wacky, “ugly” guy and self-obsessed “pretty” girl come together, so on and so forth. It’s not the most original idea, though that’s not necessarily a condemnation; we’ve been creating fiction for so long that all original ideas have just about been exhausted, if they haven’t already.
I’m having trouble writing this review because, to be honest, there wasn’t much in this episode. It did all the typical pilot things in establish character and scene and blah blah blah but for the first 23 minutes of this 25 minute or so episode, there wasn’t much to really speak about.
Togetherness also has the problem of not being that funny. It’s actually more sad than anything else. The banter between Brett Pierson (Mark Duplass) and Alex Pappas (Steve Zissis) is very tired and comes off as either two men going through the motions or the writing missing its mark. It’s a dark comedy, I guess.
Also, Mark Duplass’s character is super-duper unlikable. He comes off as so difficult and selfish that it’s almost jarring. You get what the problem is with the rest of them, but he comes off as a sanctimonious jerk. And I don’t think it’s a particularly inspired choice, either. There’s a few instances (when he takes the donuts, when he freaks out at his wife, Michelle (Melanie Lynskey), when he makes the comment about gluten in tacos) that really just turn him into the villain of the show. If he were gone, or less of a total walnut, things wouldn’t be such a problem. It’s hard to focus on growth of other characters when the change of a singular one improves the lives of everyone involved by 40%.
And yet. And yet and yet and yet.
There is something here. Something real, with potential. There were moments when the chemistry and skill of the actors overcame the material and made it something more. Little jokes, like about the cache being cleared each time Michelle browses the internet, or when Tina (Amanda Peet) gives no reply to Alex’s question of where she got the Oreos, really hit and are both funny and revealing. Amanda Peet and Melanie Lynskey are so good that it’s worth watching just for them.
A lot of the problems of this episode can be contributed to it being 1) a pilot, and 2) only thirty minutes. Comedies are notorious for being basically impossible to script a pilot for; Mike Schur once said that he wished he could write and shoot the first ten episodes of a comedy, throw them away, and start from there. I think it was a mistake for HBO to only order a thirty minute pilot instead of an hour, because there just wasn’t enough in this episode. An hour-long pilot smooths out issues of pacing and gives the writers and actors time to find their rhythm. The episode improved with every minute, which makes me wonder how far they could’ve gotten with more time.
It was enough to make me want to come back for the next episode as a viewer, which is the whole point of a pilot. Hopefully, the improvements of the last few minutes stretch into the second episode.
Stray Thoughts:
– Amanda Peet is the best. It makes me angry that she doesn’t work more.
– Melanie Lynskey is also the best. It makes me angry that she doesn’t work more.
– Ken Marino has “douchey white guy” down to a science. It’s actually a little concerning how good he is.
– The best bit of dialogue was the “I don’t know” spoken by Michelle about her lack of interest in sleeping with her husband. It was perfectly delivered by Lynskey. Just wonderful, emotive work that really hit home.
[Photo via HBO]
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