Crashing - Season One - Review: “Show Me Your Comedy Titties”

Crashing follows Pete, a savagely upbeat struggling comedian who, upon catching his wife mid-affair, must re-evaluate everything and, ultimately, 'make it’ on his own without his wife’s support (both emotionally & financially). The pilot begins with an awkward sex scene brought to you by, none other than the reigning sovereignty of awkward sex scenes, Judd Apatow (exec producer). And just like bad sex, can't we all agree we’re tired of the same moves? We get it, you got married and your sex life became unbearably bland, and now you want someone to shove a wine bottle up your asshole just cuz. Needless to say the pilot has a turbulent lacklustre beginning. At times, we can see its pilot nipples, meaning the set-up is far too obvious, it’s right out in the open, tits to the wind, formula staring you right in the face.

Though, with that being said, it’s not all bad, Jessica, Pete’s wife, played by Lauren Lapkus graces us with a nuanced portrayal of the post-modern breading winning woman. Her character, also the cheating wife, is easily unlikable (I don’t think she smiled once all season) though in some bizarre tour-de-force performance Lapkus manages to win us over right from the start. She’s unlikablely likeable and of course, we do sympathize to some degree (Pete’s aspiring stand-up career costs them more in gas than his total earnings to date, which, one correctly assumes is nil). But once the inevitable break-up happens and Pete is forced to face the world - particularly the godless world of stand-up comedy - with no support (not even a home) the series rises to the occasion.

Enter Arty Lange. One of stand-up comedy's original bad boys. Born out of the ashes of John Belushi... I dare say Pete & Arty's partnership is a match made in comedy heaven. Yes, it is something Godly - despite Lange’s affiliation with the underworld - there is no denying their on screen sparks are something holy. At times, the pilot seems aimless, but once Pete, the poster boy for Christianity, meets Arty outside a club, the story gains a much needed sense of direction. Pete’s heartache, longings, aspirations, and ineptitude become glaringly apparent when bounced off the no-shits-given Arty. Pete’s adventures with Lange, his homelessness, the fact he tells a stripper he likes wifi and Matt Damon pack a particularly comedic punch the pilot seemed to lack. As the series progresses, you learn to love it and that’s in part due to Pete’s enduring politeness that has a suffocating yet fascinating quality to it. You can’t fight it and you can’t quite comprehend it (I mean, in episode two how did Pete find anything uplifting about that diner? Lange, I’m with you - depressing) so you learn to love it and you become totally devout about it. Did I mention I love Crashing?!

Over the course of the series, we see Pete grow his comedy legs or, rather, ‘comedy titties’ as the stripper so eloquently puts it. And *spoiler* (but really who hasn’t seen this show by now) by the end of the series it was a relatively refreshing twist to see that Pete did not, in fact, grow on a personal level. Instead, when the opportunity presented itself (to get back with his ex) he threw himself into the baptismal pool lovingly, desperately, “I don’t have to be a comedian!” Pete says. But Jess shuts down any possibility of reconciliation with her triumphant proclamation… “I choose Jesus!” Alas, this is the world of television, love can’t win where season two is concerned.

So we are left with Pete and Leif (woah how have I gone this far without mentioning Leif?) broke, sad, and of course, still homeless. When it comes to laugh-out-loud moments, Crashing, a show about comedians, surprisingly has few compared with shows like Veep and Silicon Valley, though many of the gut busting zingers are brought to you by Leif (George Basil). Leif is Jess’s lover, who at first glance appears to be a poorly constructed hippy stereotype but is actually a hilarious character who is well versed in Zen koans... “We are making love to your wife and she is us and you and me. We are making love. Us,” Leif says to a horrified Pete. Basil breathes new life into what could have been a predictable performance, you know, the whole your-wife-left-you-for-a-chakra-loving-sex-God convention. But Leif has a certain vulnerability to him, not unlike Pete. We get the sense he’s settled for a career as a third grade art teacher and genuinely supports Pete’s dreams. At the end of season one, it’s uncertain what the future holds for the two characters, but it seems a friendship or at least a brokeship (broke together) is not out of the question. Does Crashing re-invent the wheel? No. Is it refreshing to see someone who isn’t a millennial struggling on screen? Yes. For a show that’s recognizably formulaic it somehow manages to be its own thing. And that’s largely due to Holmes’ character. We see the stand-up world through his lens of dewy wide eyed optimism. It’s both refreshing and, at times, bewildering. Crashing is a charmingly polite ode to the stand-up comedian world - and call me a comedy nerd buttttt I want more.