Hello Ladies & Eastbound and Down

Stephen Merchant’s “Hello Ladies” is a sit-com in the original sense of the genre. The show represents a series of variations on a single situation -- a tall, awkward and gangly Englishman is searching for sex in Hollywood. He sets his sights improbably high, hoping to date only super-models and starlets. These women are completely uninterested in the skinny Englishman’s sexual overtures and he suffers one humiliating rejection after another. This kind of comedy is the province of Merchant’s partner, Rickie Gervais, and “Hello Ladies” subjects Merchant to all sorts of cringe-worthy abuse -- indeed, the viewer’s dominant response to this material is less laughter than a kind of embarrassed shudder. Merchant’s character gets what he deserves -- he is startlingly crass and heartless in his single-minded erotic quest -- but the cruelty with which he is treated is sometimes unnerving. Cringe-comedy as the raison d’etre for an entire sit-com is a new development in TV-land. To keep the embarrassment from being overwhelming and unpleasant, the script must present the hero as fully deserving the shame and disgrace heaped upon him. TV comedy, often, functioned in this way for a moral purpose -- on “Andy Griffith,” Barney Fife repeatedly suffered indignities based on his overweening hubris and, from time to time, Ted Baxter or a buffoon on “The Bob Newhart Show” might get his comeuppance to exhibit for us what happens to those puffed-up with foolish pride. But those old TV series were primarily didactic and the embarrassment inflicted upon secondary characters was designed to show-off and highlight the virtues of a major character -- Andy Griffith’s patience and humble wisdom or Mary Tyler Moore’s spunky loyal kindness or Bob Newhart’s unassuming wit. In a show like “Hello Ladies,” the level of cynicism is much higher -- although the show satirizes the relentless and self-defeating horniness of Merchant’s character, his cringe-inducing travails don’t dramatize any moral except the post-Seinfeld proposition that people are cruel and egotistical and self-centered. Everyone acts poorly in “Hello Ladies”, the women are superficial and reject Merchant on the basis of his Ichabod Crane appearance; the handsome people sleep with other handsome people, but don’t much like their paramours -- everyone is cynically using everyone else. As the show has progressed, Merchant’s behavior seems to have become slightly less obnoxious with each episode and, it seems, that the narrative arc is aiming toward some sort of romance between his character and an attractive, professionally thwarted female roommate with whom he lives (and with whom he has chastely shared a bed in a couple of scenes.) Merchant’s horn-dog, for some inexplicable reason, can’t see the attractions of his lady room-mate (herself involved in an emotionally unsatisfying “fuck-buddy” affair with her callous agent). But, it appears, that his misfortunes may be gradually educating him for a relationship with this woman, a character, who is, after all, his friend. The show is populated with a many grotesque nerds, all of them hoping to get laid -- as it happens. the only sexually successful figure among these folks is a paraplegic who boasts that he can have sex but is unable to feel anything due to his spinal injury (this seems to sexually arouse the women that Merchant lusts after but so that the paraplegic can seduce them -- in one episode, Merchant carries the paralyzed man up flight after flight of steps so that he can bed a girl in which our hero was interested). If Merchant were a nicer fellow, his miseries would be unbearable -- but his nasty temperament and rage (he is a Barney Fife with his teeth always bared to bite) make the humiliation heaped upon seem merited and, therefore, something we can stand to watch. “Hello Ladies” follows “Eastbound and Down” with Danny McBride on HBO on Sunday nights. “Eastbound and Down” has perfected the idea that a sit-com can feature a morally repugnant and despicable hero and still be entertaining, indeed, even, sometimes quite affecting. in a weird, brutish way. McBride’s character is completely detestable but the brilliance of the show is that we always are rooting for him to succeed -- even though Mc Bride’s happiness is generally at the expense of some other character whom he mercilessly abuses. There is a crazy grandeur to McBride’s monstrous self-aggrandizing ex-baseball player turned drug addicted émigré to Mexico turned, in this year’s episodes, ESPN media super-star. McBride raises self-absorption to truly heroic levels -- he is completely blind to everyone else in his world -- but, at least, he’s not a hypocrite like the rest of characters in “Eastbound and Down” and there’s something exhilarating about watching him get his way -- he’s like Henry Miller in the opening of “Tropic of Cancer” bragging that he’s the happiest man alive. You are impressed by his chutzpah and hope the boast is true.