Matt LeBlanc is a pretty big jerk on Episodes, and not in the neurotic Larry David-on-Curb Your Enthusiasm-kind of way. In the Showtime comedy, LeBlanc plays himself as a lame-brained has-been — with a stinky Joey cologne line to match — but also a womanizer, bum dad, and most recently, the kind of guy who sleeps with his friend's wife without remorse.
It's a complicated if depressing alter ego to take on, and certainly one attention-grabbing way for the real-life LeBlanc to jump back into the spotlight following the 2006 failure of Joey. Executive producers David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik say that they didn't craft the part around the real LeBlanc, who in person is pleasant but serious, relaxed but not overly friendly. "Occasionally, he'll be playful, but he's not Joey," Klarik says.
Are the creators of Showtime's Episodes bitter? They don't think so!
"Fake Matt is...
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The February 6 episode of Showtime's Episodes makes jokes about an issue that television comedy has long avoided: rape. The storyline finds Matt LeBlanc (playing an overly clueless version of himself) at a rape prevention benefit, struggling to uncork a bottle of wine — oblivious to the survivor onstage relating the story of her brutal attack. Wickedly funny or brazenly insensitive?
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It's difficult to believe that the creators of Showtime's Episodes are not holding a grudge against network TV.
Their last series, the CBS sitcom The Class, was axed after one short season, and their follow-up comedy (for cable, natch) is nothing if not an indictment of how the worst broadcast shows get made, sometimes in spite of a great idea. Just take a gander at Episodes' fictional network honcho, a crass and careless tyrant who transforms an urbane British hit about the headmaster of an elite boys school into a broad comedy for American audiences starring Matt LeBlanc.
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Matt LeBlanc spent 12 years in Joey Tribbiani's shoes — first on the classic comedy Friends, then on its not-so-classic spin-off, Joey. But on January 9, the three-time Emmy nominee returns to TV in Showtime's Episodes as someone he's even more familiar with... Matt LeBlanc. Or at least a spoiled, morally bankrupt (and, ahem, very well-endowed) version of the actor, dreamed up for the biting Hollywood satire by cocreator (and former Friends producer) David Crane and his partner Jeffrey Klarik. LeBlanc, now 43 and father to 6-year-old Marina, sat down with TV Guide Magazine for a frank and funny chat about his new comedy, life away from the limelight and why he's opposed to a Friends reunion.
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The chasm between cable and network programming loomed especially large on Thursday, Day 2 of the Television Critics Association presentations, as Showtime occupied the morning and the CW the afternoon. Never the twain shall meet, as Showtime unveiled a provocative array of shows that caters to the very adult, while the CW, whose focus is anything but, introduced a mere two-pack of new fall shows that rests safely if stylishly within the network's comfort zone of young female empowerment...
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