Eastbound & Down - Season 1

Eastbound & Down is the work of a whole lot of good comedic minds, and stars the suddenly pervasive and awesome Danny McBride as a former big league pitcher and current big league jerk who's forced to take a job teaching gym in his hometown as he struggles to mount a comeback. The first and possibly only season is short but sweet, with just six episodes to tell the story of Kenny Powers. Will Ferrell shows up a couple times as the owner of a car dealership along with a few other recognizable faces, but McBride is totally the main attraction, as he's created one of the better comedy protagonists in recent memory that I can think of. He never stops being an asshole, but you still totally root for him because his life is so freaking depressing as the world seems to be conspiring against him.

It's really more nuanced than you might expect from what could appear at first glance to be a trashy sitcom with cursing and nudity. He yells and curses all the time and is completely full of himself, but at times he shows some genuine human understanding (shortly before he screws things up again) and you have to wonder if life always craps on him because he's a jerk or if he's a jerk because life craps on him. It's hard not to have sympathy for someone who lost a dream all too soon, even if what they did while living it was a bad use of time. Besides all that though, it's a really funny show. Kenny's overzealous speeches, his rivalry with Craig Robinson (and especially the conclusion of that), Stevie's scary devotion to him, there's a lot of laughs to be had. The finale left me wanting more, not because there was a lot left open which there was, but because I just I'm not done enjoying the unique views of Kenny Powers.