Life is too short and Eastbound and Down

Life is too short and Eastbound and Down – The fundamental ethic for a certain type of comedy is simple and savage: no one can see themselves as others see them. HBO sit-coms Life is too Short and Eastbound and Down exemplify this style of comedy and both shows are very funny; Life is too Short, in fact, is one of the funniest TV programs ever produced and, possibly, one of the most disturbing. Sit-com shows used to be cast with a monstrous egotist, completely blind to his or her own failings, as a supporting actor. These types of shows were generally named after an avuncular, kindly, handsome, and reasonably reliable figure who has the misfortune of being surrounded by various dolts – including, always, one monster of completely idiotic vanity. Mary Tyler Moore had to contend with the antics of Ted Baxter; Bob Newhart had to deal with Jerry; Andy Griffith’s deputy was the pygmy fascist, Barney Fife. With the Frasier show, the monster of vanity moved center-stage and has, perhaps, never left the limelight since – Seinfeld featured an entire cast of solipsistic egomaniacs. Life is too Short and Eastbound and Down carry this trend to its logical conclusion. The hero of Eastbound and Down is Kenny Powers, a washed up major league pitcher, exiled for his cocaine abuse and womanizing to the minors: he has unsuccessfully coached High School baseball and played for minor league ball teams in Mexico and Myrtle Beach. Kenny Powers is completely vicious and loathsome. But he is insanely true to his religion which is self-idolatry. Like all monsters of egotism, he has several sycophantic followers willing to open their veins for him and, if anything, even more insanely self-deluded. In each episode, Kenny Powers suffers some kind of horrible reverse or humiliation, mopes for a couple minutes, and, then, indomitably regains his ghastly, if admirable, self-confidence. The moral of the show, if it can be termed thus, is that delusional self-confidence is all that you really need to succeed and there is certainly something heroic about Powers’ mad pursuit of women, fame, and pleasure. Even more heroic is the tiny protagonist of Life is Too Short, Warwick Davis, a dwarf who stands about three feet tall. Davis has matinee idol good looks and walks with movie star swagger, but he only comes up to knee-height with respect to the world around him. He drives a big SUV but can’t get out of the driver’s seat without sprawling on the ground in his driveway. Locked out of his house by his normal-sized and estranged wife, he tries to enter through a swinging pet door with predictable consequences. Davis has been in Star Wars, played Ewoks and starred in Willow, a running gag since no one has seen the film in which Davis played something approaching a leading man. But this is all in the past and the phone calls for work have stopped coming. Davis owes money to the tax man and has to scramble for a living – he sells pictures of himself for 25 pounds at SciFi fan conventions, hawks DVDs on the street, and offers toasts for hire (disastrously) at weddings. In each episode, Davis suffers abject, hideous humiliations but seems, mostly, impervious to the shame and ridicule heaped upon him. Nothing can impair his gargantuan self-esteem and, as we see him waddling about the London streets in his expensively tailored suits, we come to understand that Davis is, in fact, a true tragic hero – a man with giant ambitions and colossal appetites trapped in a deformed child’s body. This is the funniest show on TV and one of the funniest comedies ever made, but it cuts very, very close to the bone. It’s bad to be a dwarf and all of Davis’ desperate posturing can’t conceal the fact that life holds nothing for him but degrading humiliation – even his greatest successes have been forms of self-abasement. Nonetheless, the little fellow is indomitable. Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant write and produce this show and they appear weekly as two indifferent gods, always shot in full frontal view and seated at a great crystal table in their mansion – they control the world of Life’s too short which nominally takes the form of a faux-documentary (called “observational sit-com”) like The Office (one of Gervaise’s other famous shows). One remarkable aspect of the show is the cameos by actors like Liam Neeson, Johnny Depp, and Helen Bonham Carter. These famous actors are also monsters of vanity and egotism and their extended riffs on fame and self-entitlement demonstrate another uncomfortable truth – these handsome, beautiful, accomplished dolts are the real monsters; their idle viciousness is far worse than Warwick Davis’ helpless vanity. Both of these shows are Cable-brutish, full of filthy jokes and cruelty – but they are redeemed by being funny, Life’s too Short transcendentally so.