Originally planned with the late and great Phil Hoffman in mind, Steven Coogan has taken up the mantle of the impotent and increasingly overqualified, if self- entitled main character.
We are immediately thrust into the life of Thom Payne, a British (of course) shill for the advertising industry desperately clinging to relevance in a world that is leaving him behind.
After a baffling and somewhat incoherent opening rant against Mount Rushmore we find out that Thom's winter of discontent comes at the hands of his new corporate overlords, half his age, and of course they are portrayed as 20 something, Scandinavian, euro- hipster clones who maliciously forsake everything Thom holds dear in the name of Twitter feeds, YouTube posts and Facebook updates.
Jammed between whimsical scenes of Kathryn Hahn having arguments with her overbearing Yiddish mother (personified by a talking ups package) and a weird scene with Coogan having aggressive sex with an animated keebler elf (yes both of those things actually happen), the breath of fresh air, Bradley Whitford, emerges as Coogan's direct supervisor and voice of reason to Coogan's outlandish antics and tantrums.
The show works, just not the way the creators intended. Rather than a referendum against the Internet age and millennial hipsterism, the show turned out to be the examination of aging Gen-Xers, desperately clinging to relevancy and resisting a world of their own creation.
We are immediately thrust into the life of Thom Payne, a British (of course) shill for the advertising industry desperately clinging to relevance in a world that is leaving him behind.
After a baffling and somewhat incoherent opening rant against Mount Rushmore we find out that Thom's winter of discontent comes at the hands of his new corporate overlords, half his age, and of course they are portrayed as 20 something, Scandinavian, euro- hipster clones who maliciously forsake everything Thom holds dear in the name of Twitter feeds, YouTube posts and Facebook updates.
Jammed between whimsical scenes of Kathryn Hahn having arguments with her overbearing Yiddish mother (personified by a talking ups package) and a weird scene with Coogan having aggressive sex with an animated keebler elf (yes both of those things actually happen), the breath of fresh air, Bradley Whitford, emerges as Coogan's direct supervisor and voice of reason to Coogan's outlandish antics and tantrums.
The show works, just not the way the creators intended. Rather than a referendum against the Internet age and millennial hipsterism, the show turned out to be the examination of aging Gen-Xers, desperately clinging to relevancy and resisting a world of their own creation.