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Episodes: Season 4
R1 - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (8th May 2016). |
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The Show
 Pucks has risen "like Jesus, if Jesus was a shitty sitcom no one watched" in the fourth season of the Showtime sitcom. With star Matt LeBlanc's (Friends) sitcom cancelled at the end of last season, writing couple Beverly (Black Books' Tamsin Greig) and Sean Lincoln (Houdini and Doyle's Stephen Mangan) – who had the American remake of their British boys school sitcom Lyman's Boys transformed unrecognizably into the aforementioned sports comedy – returned to London with the hopes of mounting their project "The Opposite of Us" on home soil. When network chairman Elliot Salad (Four Flies on Grey Velvet's Michael Brandon) hears the rumor that NBC wants Matt for the lead in Andrew Lesley's (80 Minutes' Oliver Kieran-Jones) exciting new project, he decides that he hates NBC more than Pucks and orders another six episodes, scuttling Matt's network comeback and forcing the Lincolns to return to Hollywood. Matt is no more enthusiastic than the writers and his co-star Morning Randolph (The Change-up's Mircea Monroe) about taping another six episodes with the show not even on the schedule until he finds out that his accountant has committed suicide while being investigated for stealing money from his clients, including thirty-two million from Matt ("He also wiped out his sister Zoey, and she's actually family"). Although he fails to win sympathy from Beverly and Sean when they learn he now only has thirty-one million dollars, Matt is shocked to discover that they are operating on considerably even less than what he considers poverty. When he learns that their script for The Opposite of Us is a hot property, Matt harangues them into accepting their agent Eileen's (Andrea Rosen) offer to shop it around to the networks. Although he does so out of a surprisingly genuine concern for their future security, Matt does beg Beverly and Sean to convince their former assistant now professional rival Andrew that Pucks is dead and he is still a viable choice for his show. Network executive Carol Rance (Gone Girl's Kathleen Rose Perkins) makes another play for a promotion only to be told that the network is headhunting Helen Basch (Step Brothers' Andrea Savage) to turn the troubled network around. This is especially worrying to Carol because she had an affair with Helen's husband, and she is further worried that her other indiscretions will cast her in an unfavorable light with a woman in power who is sure to already hate her. When happily divorced Helen makes a move on her, however, Carol discovers that her attraction to power is not necessarily tied to her daddy issues. Advised to cut back on his expenses by his accountants, Matt would rather hurry along his ex-wife Diane (Brooklyn's Fiona Glascott ) into a new marriage with a possibly abusive beau than sell his vineyard, classic car collection, or beach house. When sparks reignite between the two of them, Matt may have found another solution to his alimony problems. No sooner are Sean and Beverly the talk of the town, however, than Sean's old writing partner Tim (The Duchess' Bruce Mackinnon) – who regards Beverly as their partnership's Yoko Ono – turns up to claim part ownership of their project, pointing out the extensive similarities it has to a project they were working on with the typed notes to prove it. Also back is Merc Lapidus (Mad About You's John Pankow), the former president of the network responsible for greenlighting Lyman's Boys, who manages to sell what sounds like a Dutch "torture porn" version of Survivor to the network due to his past bedding of Carol and Helen's indebtedness to him for her start in the business. During the course of hit NBC "Must See TV" series Friends' ten season run, the movie careers of most of its ensemble sextet had risen and fallen with the exception of Jennifer Aniston (Leprechaun). LeBlanc netted the NBC spinoff series Joey with the character pursuing his career in Hollywood, but lightning did not strike twice; the series ended after the second season and it would be another five years before he landed another series in Episodes from Friends co-creator David Crane (Veronica's Closet) and Jeffrey Klarik (Mad About You). Although not offering much originality in the way of Hollywood satire, Episodes still probably is what Joey should have been as LeBlanc had become too synonymous with his lovably dumb Friends character. Sleazy and profane without going the full Charlie Sheen, LeBlanc's sendup of himself here is a likable character who is funny with Sean and Beverly and conveys touching warmth with his ex-wife even as he is always on the verge of doing or saying something awful (like teaching his sons how to draw a vagina for a school art project). The twenty-odd minute episodes are kind of crunched for screentime with the storylines, so the season is best enjoyed in binge watching mode as the amount of plot development for each character within a single episodes seems at times to be only a single act's worth (on the other hand, the show might have felt interminable had the same storylines been spread over a network show's twenty-four episode season). As it is, the show cannot seem to decide whether LeBlanc is the main character or a guest star whose sole purpose should be to provide Sean and Beverly with more reason to hate Hollywood; indeed, despite the Friends connections behind the camera, one wonders how much LeBlanc's presence in this American/British television co-production mirrors the imposition of the television version of himself on the remake of Sean's and Beverly's show). 
Video
The season's nine episodes are split between two dual-layer DVDs with five on the first and four on the second with an hour-length extra (see below). The progressive, anamorphic encode looks colorful and reasonably sharp, with some of the usual down-scaling edge enhancement making long shots look a bit softer and flatter. 
Audio
Audio options include an English Dolby Digital 5.1 track which is fairly restrained even though this is not a live audience sitcom, along with a Spanish stereo dub. The captions option in the menu actually takes the viewer to a screen informing them of the presence of closed captions rather than SDH subtitles. 
Extras
The sole extra is the full pilot for the unrelated Showtime series Billions (59:28) with Paul Giamatti (Sideways) and Damian Lewis (Homeland). 
Overall
While rather lightweight as Hollywood satire, Episodes is an entertaining diversion. 
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