Difficult People

Difficult people is about two really awful people who go around being awful and catty and mean.

This can work, as it does in You're the Worst. But Difficult People is far less ambition. It basically feels like a couple of comedians who thought it would be funny to make a show where they just do insult comedy every week.

The first episode was *mildly* amusing. I laughed once or twice, even though I found the characters unlikable and the premise thin. The second episode had all the flaws of the first but was even less funny. So that's the last episode I'll be watching.

It's a little inaccessible. The jokes would be funny, if I actually knew what the heck they were talking about. I don't live under a rock either, I follow pop culture. The casting is terrible. Is her dumb boyfriends supposed to be a straight man who is interested in this fat, uncharismatic, self-absorbed girl? He is an unnecessary character; somehow, he doesn't hang out with Billy and Julie, but he is in no way a foil to Billy. He's like a redundant piece of furniture. I think pretty much everything about this show (with the exception of Julie's costume design) is terrible. They somehow manage to make her appear smaller. But honestly, she's not cute, and she's barely funny, and this entire show is pretty indulgent. If you're not cute, be funny at least.

Follows the same formula as Seinfeld. No hugging, no learning, but it's missing something. Eichner's character is excellent, but the supporting cast are extremely annoying, which is I know what they're going for but it just doesn't work. There's nothing interesting about them, you could remove them totally and the show would be better for it. I love a show with flawed characters, I don't need them to evolve, but after a while it feels like you're watching the same episode over and over. I watched the full first season and there are really great moments and very funny lines scattered amongst it, but it's not enough to hold me. I mostly kept watching for Andrea Martin who is fabulous as Julie's mother.

This is a show for a very narrow demographic. The range of pop culture put downs is vast. It's hard to imagine anyone but gay, full-time couch potatoes understanding all of it. I come close to that category, but I'm old. Younger versions of me will probably get more of it. And, you've got to be quick to even take it all in. The show may be just a so-so framework for a barrage of rat-a-tat-tat jokes, but oh, what jokes!

The lines are tossed off so fast and are so all-over-the-place topically they barely register. If you waste time laughing, you'll miss the next joke. Not many shows can work in a line like "If I've learned anything, it's that there are limits to even what Viola Davis can make plausible." Now, for me, that's funny. And it's funny because it's true. But I can easily understand that a lot of people would be baffled. Not only do you have to know who Viola Davis is, you have to have seen enough of her work to know that she's been in some real turkeys.

I especially like some of the side players, truly original characters we haven't seen before. E.g., the transgender server who's a 911 conspiracy theory nut. When she says to a co-worker, "I wish you'd been on Flight 93," it's stunning. I'm not sure what my reaction was. Did I laugh because it was funny, or was I just astonished by the anything-is-fair-game attitude? I don't know, and frankly, I don't care. I was entertained, and in the broadest sense of the word.

You may hate the characters, and you may not like their constantly snarky attitude. But you have to admire how they can simultaneously celebrate and fearlessly skewer the values American pop culture has engendered in us all.

Great new comedy!

It's been a while since I watched something labeled as comedy and actually laughed because of it. I have survived through many comedy series where the laughter in the background is making me feel guilty that I am not laughing when it is clearly a "Hey! This part is funny!You should laugh as well!" sign. Watching this was refreshing.

Mean comedy is not really that new and it is not really nice when you encounter it in real life if it is enforced by negativeness. But even with that, I really did laugh and enjoyed the first three episodes.

It might be a just a bit harder for some with all of the celebrity references, but even without that knowledge, they will make you laugh.

I hope that people will be able to look at this for what it is: a comedy series. And in comedy, nothing is offensive.