I’m not really liking Togetherness. It’s not doing much for me. Having watched three episodes, I’ve come up with a list of complaints that I’ve managed to boil down to two things: stale and all over the place. The skewering of the LA movie scene and its players, the motivations and actions of Michelle, even the way the romance came about between Alex and Tina; none of it is fresh, in any way.
What’s funny is that I’m not a stickler about originality; I think it’s a fruitless exercise to come up with a wholly original idea. But what I am a stickler for is coming at it from a new perspective and a white upper-middle class family and their struggling actor friend is definitely not that. And that’s not to say that you can’t get a new perspective from that point of view, but the perspective they do have has been told over and over again.
From a craft perspective, the show is all over the place. I don’t particularly think scenes and plots go together well. Michelle’s decision to have a “night to herself” came out of left field for me. Her original goal was to bring her family closer together and then she skips out on going to her husband’s event on purpose so that she can go drink at a bar and bum cigarettes from teenagers? So that she can end up at a random and very convenient town hall meeting about charter schools and flirt with a divorced dad? I don’t understand it at all.
Usually I give comedies a pretty big leeway when it comes to plot, because it’s supposed to be funny and plot, for the most part, shouldn’t get in the way of humor. In a straight-up comedy, I mean. But the problem is that the show isn’t funny. It’s just not. The beginning in which Alex struggles with the Insanity workout is not funny at all. The “strawberries are plump” and “they have nice toilet paper here” arc with Alex and Producer Larry was cringe-worthy but not actually funny. Nor was the douchebag director. Nor was the sudden change in tone when Brett was videotaping the bird, and then we get a wide shot of him in a weird stance.
I had high hopes, as well, for the Tina/Alex relationship; I mentioned in my last review that their relationship reminded me of The Whole Nine Yards with Amanda Peet and Matthew Perry. The Peet/Perry relationship was completely platonic, and I really thought it made the movie a lot more enjoyable than it would’ve been otherwise. I was really, really hoping they would go a similar direction and make Tina/Alex platonic best friends but of course not. I don’t know why I would even expect that.
The little that did grab my attention came from the Tina/Alex stuff, though, so I’m interested to see how it progresses. Even if I wasn’t reviewing it, I think I’d still watch it for that, but it’s getting to the point where I think that improvements needs to be made or fan-me will get to the point where they would just give up on it.
Also, Peter Gallagher was perfect in this episode. Worth watching for his performance alone.
Stray Thoughts:
– Brett was much more tolerable this episode. Really glad to see tthat.
– I was really happy to see, as well, some genuine affection between Alex and Brett. For the first time I totally bought they were really close friends.
– I mentioned this in the review, but it’s worth repeating: the skewering of the LA movie scene feels really, really dated. I felt like I was watching a movie from the 80’s.
– Weird things bother me. Like, you put Alex Pappas through a massive Insanity workout and he isn’t sweating? You have Alex come in in spanx and he doesn’t understand the laughter? You have them show texting in an accurate manner, and then you mess up a Google search?
[Photo via HBO]
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