Eastbound & Down - Season 2

If I had to pick one, the second season doesn't quite live up to the mostly brilliant first. But as a direct follow-up and the soul-searching middle part of a story (it's been picked up for a third and supposedly final season), Eastbound & Down season two was very good. It finds Kenny Powers in Mexico after his chance with Tampa Bay falls through, living off the spoils of cock fighting and his friend Stevie's stolen credit card. It's a new low in Kenny's life, but you wouldn't know it from the exterior, as he's still as arrogant, self righteous, and vulgar as ever. The best part of the show is still just listening to him narrate his own version of his life and curse people out for disappointing him over and over again. In terms of creating a character that's a total jerk but one you still can't help but love, it's still one of the best successes on television.

But the whole show isn't just Kenny strutting around, doing drugs, and chasing women. His destiny is to be a ballplayer again, and the thrust of the season is him getting a shot through a local baseball team. The manager knows who he is and wants to help him get back into the game, but Kenny is often his own worst enemy as he misjudges his relationships with others and has conflicts with the team owner. The plot follows a lot of the same beats as the first season, but it also does some new things including some exploration of why Kenny is the way he is that's particularly enlightening. It's basically the same mix of comedy, depressing moments, awesomely appropriate music, nudity, and entertaining cameos throughout these seven episodes, and the Mexican setting helps keep it fresh. Unlike the huge downer of the last finale, this one is more hopeful, and I'm really interested in seeing how things end up for our old buddy Kenny fuckin' Powers.

Observe and Report

This was an unusual film. It had the slightly unfortunate position of coming out around the same time as Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and they share a similar premise on the surface, but from what I know about that film, there's really almost nothing in common. The movie is surprisingly dark, much more of a black comedy than they really advertised. It's less about Seth Rogen hitting on Anna Faris and pursuing a flasher, and more a story of a bipolar man with serious delusions of grandeur trying to make himself into something. I don't want to overplay this side of it, because first things first it is a comedy, but I was fairly impressed with Rogen's performance, and there were some fairly disturbing (if still funny) moments when you see more into the crazy things he actually thinks about himself and his abilities.

Both the funniest and most tragic thing about his aspirations of being a real cop if it weren't for his medical issues is that he would actually be pretty good at it. A lot of the movie is fairly mundane, but there are a few scenes that get violent and are actually pretty effective as action and show an unexpected degree of skill with weaponry in Rogen's character. I don't want to spoil what actually happens, but they're some of the most memorable scenes from last year. Jody Hill seems as much concerned with shocking the audience as making them laugh, but not in a gross-out way, and it's an approach that mostly works for me.

There's some pretty funny stuff with Rogen and his fellow mall security guys, and his antagonistic relationship with Aziz Ansari is terrific. Not every scene really meets its potential, though. His confrontation with Patton Oswalt's asshole food court restaurant manager could have gone farther, and the sidekick character is definitely a situation where he was probably funnier on paper. It's not an outstanding movie, but it does a lot to stick out from the crowd, especially the climax, which I'd rather not spoil but is one of the best scenes I've seen in ages. It really has to be seen to be believed. I actually thought the ending was a bit too upbeat for the story, but a lot about the film is going to stick with me for a while.

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.