Television Review: “Togetherness” in its second season.
A lot of people I know simply can’t get into “Togetherness”. Their reasons are many: it’s too slow, not enough happens, too much whining, it’s too tuned into the problems of upper-middle class Angelinos to focus on pretty much anything else. To these people, I say: look deeper. Look beyond those “slow” patches and those bumbling, awkward moments and you will see that the creators have gone to great lengths to lend these characters a kind of cracked humanity, as well as a tremendous depth of vulnerability. “Togetherness” isn’t’ a show where big reveals happen every week or where we’re chomping at the bit to get to the next installment — although, in the defense of Mark and Jay Duplass, the show’s creators, the show is also a lot more emotionally engaging than many other plot-centric, allegedly “can’t-miss” shows on network T.V. (my wife swears it’s more nerve-wracking than most small-screen thrillers, go figure). In “Togetherness,” the Duplasses have opted to look deep into themselves in order to paint this loving, patient and pinpoint-accurate portrait of middle-aged ennui and marital conflict. Is it that unreasonable that they may ask you, the viewer, to do the same?
The first season of “Togetherness” was a low-key jewel in last year’s television lineup: rich with emotion, unexpectedly atmospheric, and funny and sad in just the right measure. It felt more confident and complete than the last two features that the Duplasses put out — “Jeff, Who Lives at Home” and “The Do-Deca Pentathalon,” which were both very good films in their own way. In the brother’s defense, “Togetherness” may just be the work that they’ve been building towards their entire lives. The Duplasses are in love with life’s tiny ironies and the off-key music of ordinary human conversation, and they’ve forged a pretty amazing career on the foundation of their D.I.Y. humanist aesthetic, their willingness to work with friends and non-actors and their generally democratic approach to storytelling. In a way, the first season of “Togetherness” felt like one long, rambling and gorgeous Duplass brothers feature film sliced up into seven episodes. And yet it also felt more complete, more mature and resonant than anything they’ve done before or since. Season One ended on a cliffhanger that was almost devastating in its bleakness, but the six episodes that preceded it still gave off the assured shape and timbre of a self-contained fictional world. Yet, the question remained: exactly where would this quiet, unassuming and undeniably special show go in season two?
The second season of “Togetherness” opens not in the cozy suburbs of Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, but on a film set in New Orleans. Alex Pappas — played by Steve Zissis, who is nothing short of magnificent and really should be recognized for his work here — has finally been cast as a vampire villain in a schlocky-looking but apparently high-profile new feature film that looks suspiciously like a bad “True Blood” knock-off. Alex is finally (sort of) successful; at the very least, he’s a long way from stress-eating donuts and sleeping on the couch of his best friend Brett, (Mark Duplass) as he did in season one. There’s still the awful, lingering question of his aborted sort-of relationship with drama queen Tina, (Amanda Peet) who cruelly rejected him after he jogged, biked and generally hauled ass from Eagle Rock to Santa Monica to profess his love for her. For anyone who’s familiar with the geography of L.A., that’s roughly the sadcom equivalent of Moses traveling through the desert for forty years. It’s not quite an exodus, but it’s close enough.
Meanwhile, Michelle (the one-of-a-kind Melanie Lynskey) is still reeling from her strange excursion into infidelity, while the normally more maladjusted Brett is seemingly in the best mental shape we’ve seen him in so far. The stage is set for another delicately rendered series of small-scale power plays and emotional ruptures, but what’s beautiful about “Togetherness” in its second season is that it forges absorbing drama out of activities that would receive passing glances in other shows: a trip to an antiques store, sitting around and watching Netflix, cleaning up after a baby. These tiny, seemingly inconsequential asides are what make “Togetherness,” in a way, riveting television. The reason is simple. We care — or at least I do — deeply about these characters. None of them are perfect, but they are immediately recognizable and sketched with the depth of character that I’ve really only seen in great short stories. They are all, in their own selfish, slightly blindsided way, trying to do the right thing, and watching them try has made for another round of incredible television.
In case you couldn’t tell, I love this show. Unapologetically, and without caveats. Is it perfect? No. But it’s a show about imperfection on a fundamental human level. Should it be perfect? If anything, the first two episodes of “Togetherness” season two are more assured in their touch than the comparatively looser season one, and it’s going to be a joy to spend another season of television with these characters. Steve Zissis remains the show’s M.V.P. for me, although Peet and Lynskey give him some stiff competition. No disrespect meant towards Duplass — Brett is the show’s moral center and arguably the closest thing the show has to a straight man, and Mr. Duplass gives arguably the show’s most grounded performance (he is also very generous with the other actors, frequently letting them take over a scene and playing off them amusedly).
But seriously — what a touching, hilarious, achingly human performance Steve Zissis gives on this show. The Duplass brothers have known Zissis since high school, when he was allegedly an ace theatre actor and one of the more popular kids in his class. Looking at Zissis, you might peg him for a grown-up nerd, but it’s a sign of the brother’s underlying humanism that you must never trust these sort of appearances — they’ve spoken of Zissis of having a sort of ‘magic,’ a transcendent charisma that upends the expectations of everyone who might want to see the guy fail. Whatever it is, Zissis brings that and more to his role as Alex, and the spectrum of emotions that he’s asked to convey on the show is nothing short of astounding. I’m torn between wanting to see more of Zissis in film and television and wanting to selfishly keep him relegated to “Togetherness,” so he can continue perfecting this particular character over further seasons.
Peet’s Tina, on the opposite end of the spectrum, is deep in the shit in the first two episodes. She’s as narcissistic and noxious as ever, still throwing temper tantrums when she doesn’t get her way and still compensating with oversized displays of showmanship, as when she manifests her unresolved feelings for Alex in physical form by purchasing him a $4,000 vintage scuba compass at a New Orleans thrift shop. As always, Peet is utterly fearless: it’s the show’s gamiest performance, and also the one that will test the endurance of certain viewers who want a protagonist who isn’t so petulant and self-absorbed. But just as they do with Alex, Michelle and Brett, the Duplasses see Tina in all her messy, imperfect humanity and accept her for exactly who she is.
That doesn’t mean Tina shouldn’t strive to be a little nicer to everyone around her. Kindness and empathy is something all of the characters on this show struggle with, whether it’s Brett masking his petty neurosis with bland displays of passive-aggression, Tina making Alex’s birthday dinner all about her or the wonderful John Ortiz as David — you remember, Michelle’s co-worker with whom she engaged in a messy sexual tryst in a Sacramento hotel room last season — anxiously begging for Michelle’s affections, completely, blissfully unaware that this woman he’s pining for has a husband and a child at home. Unlike the characters who populate Lena Dunham’s “Girls,” the characters of “Togetherness” have lived a little. They’re older, if not a whole lot wiser, but many of them are at an age where attitude is no longer something you can hide behind. Needless to say, the world has let them down on more than one occasion. The difference is that the characters of “Togetherness” want to be better: in their own funny, touching and sometimes self-serving ways, they are all striving to be better versions of themselves. Call me crazy, but I think that’s kind of radical in the television landscape right now.
“Togetherness” occupies kind of an odd space on HBO’s current Sunday night line-up, after “Vinyl” — which, three episodes in, is entertainingly overblown and increasingly problematic — and “Girls,” a show that has mellowed in its fifth season, but only slightly. It’s easy to imagine that those who crave plot twists and illicit thrills — the kind of stuff HBO used to be known for, before all that pesky psychology got in the way — may find “Togetherness” a bit too small-scale. That’d be a shame. “Togetherness” is pure magic: unaffected, surprising and completely undeniable. It delves deeper into character and behavior than most other urban sitcoms would dare to and emerges with treasure when it brings its head up for air. I hope this show stays around for a good long while — although, with great T.V. shows, there’s always the question of outstaying your welcome — but for now, here’s to another fine and funny season of one of the best shows on T.V.
Grades: “Hotels,” A-. “Everybody is Grownups,” A
