Beyond Therapy
Family psychodrama awash in self-pity
As
Huff’s second season opens, the title shrink (
Hank Azaria) is lost in thought, not paying attention to his droning patient. Kind of how I felt watching this whiny, discordant and unfocused drama (Sundays at 10 pm/ET on Showtime), which whipsaws wildly and mostly unsuccessfully between raunchy dark comedy and existential family tragedy.
I kept watching my DVD time display, waiting (like the doctor) for each hour to be up. I got through seven of 13 new episodes before bailing, around the time Huff’s blabby conscience, which takes the form of a “Homeless Hungarian,” tells him to “wake up and smell the unspoken need.”
What I’m smelling is Showtime’s desperate need to launch a breakout drama that could attract the buzz of an FX or an HBO. Huff isn’t it.
The hook is that Huff and his bitterly unhappy wife (Paget Brewster) are surrounded by traumatic personalities: his alcoholic mom (Blythe Danner), his schizophrenic brother (Andy Comeau), their sensitive son (Anton Yelchin), who breaks into houses. And to add debauched zest, his best friend is a drug- and sex-addicted lawyer (Oliver Platt) who always finds new ways to hit bottom. Having fun yet?
Despite some fine performances, and glittery guest stars like Sharon Stone (as a fraudulent PR exec) and Anjelica Huston (as a doctor specializing in alternative drug therapies), Huff is stubbornly inert, going all over the place tonally while going nowhere emotionally.
This may not be the next Six Feet Under, as Showtime may have wished for, but that’s certainly where it belongs.
Last Gasps
How cute for WB to still be playing the network game, launching a full mid-season slate as if it weren’t about to merge with UPN to become the new CW. The only thing cuter is Pepper Dennis (Tuesdays at 9 pm/ET), a likably featherweight romantic-comedy hour.
Rebecca Romijn makes a confident leap to TV stardom as the scrappy, adorably klutzy Pepper, a Chicago TV reporter who (shades of Grey's Anatomy) discovers her latest one-night stand is the dreamy new anchor. Think "Ally McCouric" in a bubbly slapstick trifle that plays like David E. Kelley lite: less offensive, also less original. At least Pepper has a decent shot at the CW lineup.
The worst WB newbie is The Bedford Diaries (Wednesdays at 9 pm/ET), a self-important college drama about students in professor Matthew Modine’s seminar on sexual behavior. It wants to be shockingly frank but is mostly dour and phony. If you want to think fondly of WB, remember Felicity. Forget Bedford, which won’t be hard.
