Television Roundup: “F is for Family” and IFC’s “Maron”.
Bill Burr and Marc Maron are two of modern comedy’s most outspoken cranks. They’re both pretty damn funny funny (also: exceptionally pissed-off) white dudes for whom carefully worded invective is akin to spoken poetry. Burr, in his profane recollections of blue-collar angst, sometimes channels the bawdy Beantown agitation of Denis Leary, while his peer Maron occasionally recalls the acerbic fury of former “Daily Show” vet Lewis Black. It’s safe to say that both men have their own kind of singular comic voice, however alienating and potentially offensive that voice may be to some. Coincidentally, both men have recently brought projects broadcasting their own unique gifts to Netflix: Burr with his bleak animated sitcom “F is for Family” and Maron with the third season of his self-titled, loosely-autobiographical show that’s more or less an extension of his very good podcast.
Of the two shows, I think I prefer “F is for Family,” although lord knows the show doesn’t make it easy. It’s dark stuff. “Family” is the story of Frank Murphy, a loudmouthed, hot-tempered sitcom paterfamilias whose deep-simmering sense of resentment and anger — not to mention his past as a battle-scarred veteran of the Korean War — often result in him exploding into fits of rage at the worst possible moments. Frank lives under a ramshackle roof with his wife Suzy, (Laura Dern) who is eventually revealed to be just as fed-up as her fuming husband, their bong-ripping, prog rock-loving stoner son Kevin, (the terrific Justin Long, who does many other voices on the show) plus daughters Maureen and Bill, who are competing for the title of Sanest Member of the Murphy Clan. Burr’s success comes in the distortion of standard sitcom plotting devices and bending them to hard-hitting extremes, such as when Frank purposefully sabotages his wife’s opportunity to find gainful employment, or his desire to best a neighbor — an unctuous, oversexed free-love douchebag played with stoned, smarmy brilliance by Sam Rockwell — by buying a bigger T.V. than him. I wouldn’t go so far as to call Burr a conservative comic — he’s never been that explicitly political — but “F is for Family” is indeed a million miles away from p.c., subscribing largely to the same kind of tough, unsentimental, do-your-fucking-job-and-go-home attitude espoused by its cantankerous lead character.
There’s obviously a lot of misery on display in “F is for Family” but there’s also sublime moments of what-the-fuck invention, such as when Vic tells his new, uber-foxy girlfriend to “[go and] fix me some mac n’ cheese baby… and not the spiral kind, it makes me dizzy.” And yet what makes Burr’s show — which is executive produced by Vince Vaughn, who may have been an interesting choice to voice Frank once upon a time — so different from the flimsy likes of “Family Guy” and “American Dad” is the weird core of pathos that exists as the show’s bruised heart. “F is for Family” has gags for days, but it also has moments of real honesty and ugliness that one senses the Seth MacFarlanes of the world might back away from. The show is definitely uneven, as many animated comedies tend to be in their early seasons. Yet, surely we can all admit that no show that contains the following line can be completely without merit: “Be nice to your sister. You’re gonna be sleeping on her couch after your first divorce.” This isn’t laughing ‘till it hurts, but rather laughing because it hurts.
IFC’s “Maron” is a looser, more laid-back affair, though this attitude is not always to the show’s benefit. As far as narrative concepts go, it’s almost a little too simple: Marc Maron plays a version of himself, living in bucolic isolation in L.A.’s charming Highland Park neighborhood with his cats Monkey, Lafonda and Boomer. He does his podcast out of his garage, providing the show with some of its livelier passages (if there’s one thing Maron can definitely do, it’s talk). He also takes time to hang out with some of his comedian pals and occasionally stews in self-made puddles of self-pity and agony. Maron also occasionally makes a mistimed pass at the opposite sex, but if you’ve seen the likes of “Louie” or “Curb your Enthusiasm” — two masterful cringe comedies that “Maron” is frequently compared to — you know how well this type of scenario is likely to go. Much of “Maron’s” third season then proceeds at the leisurely, somewhat indulgent pace of a Richard Linklater movie, albeit with a generally sourer worldview and a seemingly never-ending roster of cameos from the who’s who of the stand-up comedy world.
The best episode of “Maron’s” very funny first season was its second, which was about the perpetually flustered comic’s vain attempts at removing a deceased possum from his garage. Not much really happens as far as plot in the episode, which is indeed titled “Dead Possum” — nothing, really. And yet, through telling, lyrical bits of minutiae, Maron was somehow able to thoughtfully examine notions of confused masculine identity and also the notion of duty. It was the finest episode in a pretty damn fine season of television, and “Maron” still has yet to eclipse it.
The problem with the third season of “Maron” — and I could be wrong about this — is that it doesn’t appear to me that Maron himself is asking these kinds of questions anymore. Really, there’s empathy and a broad understanding of humanity on Maron’s podcast that is only hinted at in the show. The hero of “Maron” has stopped considering how he appears in the world at large, and as a result, every character or situation in the show serves to underline the main character’s increasingly monomaniacal frame of mind. The exception to this rule would be the third episode, “Ex-Pod,” a season highlight that sees Maron attempt to make amends with his ex-wife, but even this lacerating installment sets such an improbably high standard that the rest of the season just can’t help but look a little disappointing by comparison. There’s also the fact himself that Maron himself is a highly, highly unusual leading man: he’s gruff and disagreeable, (in one episode entitled “Patent Troll,”, Maron suggests to his agent that he audition for the new Noah Baumbach movie, given the director’s history of casting “scruffy, depressed Jews”) although it’s hard to argue that the show surrounding him is tailored more or less perfectly to his sensibilities.
Ultimately, both “F is for Family” and “Maron” are funny and flawed examples of two very different but equally considerable authorial voices in the landscape of T.V. comedy. It’s not like mad-as-hell white guys are in and of themselves hilarious (look to Sam Kinison and Andrew Dice Clay for proof of this) but both Burr and Maron make a pretty strong case for the comedy of malaise by treating the material with a surprising degree of reverence. That’s not to say these two shows aren’t funny: they are, to varying degrees. It’s just that the laughs in these particular shows also happen to draw blood. GRADES: ““F is for Family” B. “Maron” C+
