After finding success with two very fresh and original comedies in Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle, it’s a little disappointing to see Amazon even consider a potential series like Down Dog, one of the most unfunny, lazy, and just plain boring pilots I’ve ever seen. It’s as if the episode’s writer Robin Schiff (Super Fun Night, Are You There Chelsea?) was attempting to recreate the vulgar-infused romanticism that made up some of the best moments of the early days of Showtime’s Californication, before that show became a shell of its former self. Unfortunately, Down Dog is a shell of a shell, a soulless string of scenes involving yoga instructor stoner Logan (Josh Casaubon) stumbling his way through life with no sense of purpose, while somehow becoming the fantasy of every single woman he encounters.
And really, a lot of Down Dog‘s problems begin and end with Logan, who is both uninteresting and unlikable as a main character. We’re given a brief history of how he came to be the deadbeat adult he now is today through a bunch of unnecessary voiceover (because shows this TV season have just loved giving us that) and quick flashbacks to life with his hippie parents, who made the majority of their money growing and selling weed. Logan was cursed with the problem of being really attractive and incredibly lazy, and he eventually realizes that he wants to change his lifestyle.
Fast forward years later, Logan is now a yoga instructor at a studio that he co-owns with his girlfriend, Amanda (Paget Brewster), who spends half of Down Dog‘s thirty-minute running time on the phone and isn’t allowed to do much else except complain and cry. After Logan doesn’t give her the answer she wants about marriage, Amanda breaks up with him, causing Logan to seek refuge in the advice of his friends Matt and Cody (Amir Talai and Will Greenberg) and in the bed of Lyndsy Fonseca’s dim-witted Winter. When Amanda discovers Logan sleeping with Winter, whom she had suspected Logan had been having an affair with while she and he were still together (hey, at least Logan waited a few hours after they were broke up), she tells him that she wants out of the studio; he can buy her out or not, but she will no longer be his partner, meaning that Logan, who has skated by on his charm and good looks for most of his life must now become responsible and take charge of the studio.
That’s essentially where Down Dog ends, with Matt and Cody offering up some BS words of encouragement to Logan about how he can prove people wrong and that he’s capable of doing this, when we’ve been shown absolutely nothing in the 25 minutes or so beforehand that would suggest that. Logan has demonstrated no form of drive or initiative in any part of his life, from his role as co-owner of the studio to his relationship with Amanda. The two biggest decisions that he makes in the episode are buying a $2,000 Buddha and agreeing to be in a yoga video.
Like its “go with the flow” protagonist, Down Dog doesn’t give us any reason to care about it as a show. All of its characters and their relationships feel generic and lifeless, and the series even employs “Lakita’s Theme” from Slumdog Millionaire to try to instill Logan and Amanda’s romance with some type of substance, as if borrowing music from an Oscar-winning film would somehow transform the show into something more than the awful dreck it is (although it may have now tainted Slumdog Millionaire for me, so thanks for that, Down Dog).
Ultimately, Down Dog is a painfully dull and utterly unoriginal pilot that wastes some talented performers (both Brewster and Fonseca are better and deserve better than the material they’re given here). Here’s hoping Amazon passes on this one and just pretends it never happened. I know that’s what I’ll be doing.
[Photo via Amazon]
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