The Comedians Review: A Show Unbefitting Its Title

At a glance, The Comedians—a new FX comedy starring Billy Crystal—almost looks like one of those 10/90 shows, just like Charlie Sheen's Anger Management, George Lopez's Saint George, or Martin Lawrence and Kelsey Grammer's Partners. You know, the ones where a multi-camera sitcom starts out with a 10-episode order, and then if it hits a certain ratings threshold, it earns 90 more episodes. The 10/90 production model is the TV equivalent of a buffet lunch, producing an excess of low-quality content to feed a less-than-discerning audience, and the series it yields usually serve as lifeboats for actors who are past their prime. The also tend to feature hackneyed and too-familiar premises and follow sitcom-template scripts that are lazily filled in, Mad Libs-style—whatever it takes to churn out episodes as fast as possible.

Well, The Comedians isn't a multi-camera comedy with a 10/90 production deal; it's a single-camera comedy with a 13-episode first season. However, it (mostly) still fits the description of the former. Crystal is the man on the outs, and the show's too-familiar premise involves a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a TV show (most recently employed by Showtime's Episodes and NBC's 30 Rock). In this case, the show-within-a-show is a sketch comedy hosted by fictionalized versions of Crystal and Josh Gad (Broadway's The Book of Mormon, NBC's 1600 Penn), and they're basically more on-the-nose versions of every character they've ever played. Crystal's the aging comedy vet who's trying to keep his career alive, and Gad is the hot young comedian on the rise and *surprise!* they don't get along too well, mostly because one of them is a geezer and the other is a squirt.

I'll cut to the chase: The Comedians fails in almost every attempt to be funny, entertaining, or relevant. If your first response upon hearing the show's logline was, "Oh lordy, this stars Billy Crystal and Josh Gad?" then you'd better stay away. I'm not a card-carrying member of the I Hate Billy Crystal Club, but the guy's brand of comedy has always felt stuck in a certain era to me. Even in the '90s, it seemed a little old, and on The Comedians, it's quintessential Crystal, right down to making old-people faces and waddling. I'm hoping that's the point, as his character is waving from one side of the generation gap while Gad's character is staring into his phone on the other side. But Crystal's character isn't satirized for being out of touch; instead, he's the guy we're supposed to root for. Meanwhile, Gad is playing an oblivious buffoon whose sole purpose on Earth is to irritate Crystal. And in that sense, Crystal's character and I have something in common.

Rounding out The Comedians' cast of TV-show-making characters are anxious producer Kristen (Stephnie Weir), quiet pushover writer Mitch (Matt Oberg), and oblivious, bubblegum-snapping production assistant Esme (Megan Ferguson), as well as a cornucopia of guest stars including Mel Brooks, Steven Weber, Joe Torre, and Will Sasso. But make no mistake! This is Crystal and Gad's show! (And it's a good thing, too, because the supporting characters don't add much to the proceedings, at least early on.)

The entire show is filmed in a mockumentary style, with cameramen shooting the making of The Billy & Josh Show, an FX sketch-comedy series (The Comedians' version of FX headquarters even has posters for The Americans on the wall). And the first few episodes contain a lot of Hollywood-insider material that shows promise. For example, test markets don't really like Billy in his pilot for The Billy & Billy Show, where he plays all the characters in every skit—including the main players in the infamous fake-orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally—and other showbiz bits feature Crystal calling up an old director friend (Steven Weber... as a transexual) from the '80s and Crystal and Gad being nominated for the same Kids' Choice Award. But the backbone of The Comedians is the tension between old-school Crystal and new-blood Gad, which gets old fast.

FX sent out quite a few episodes of The Comedians for review, so I figured I'd keep watching until the series delivered the inevitable plot about Crystal smoking weed; I made it to Episode 3, an utter waste of a half-hour filled with tired pot clichés. It's on just about the same level as Episode 2, in which Crystal reluctantly invites Gad over to to watch some NBA playoffs, but Gad knows nothing about basketball and sabotages the evening with Gad-like antics. I usually expect a lot more edge from FX, but The Comedians is as familiar as anything that came before it, probably because the meta show-within-a-show approach has already been beaten to death.

If there's one element of The Comedians to look forward to, it's the cutaways to clips from The Billy & Josh Show, where the two stars parody prestige TV series like Orange Is the New Black (with Crystal as Lewis Black) and Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain (with lots of projectile vomit). They're the show's only opportunity to embrace silliness, and they're much more successful than its attempts at Hollywood satire.

The Comedians was an opportunity for Crystal to reinvent himself, and FX seemed was the perfect place for him to do so. But he hasn't changed one bit, and in contrast to the cutting-edge comedy of its schedule partner Louie, The Comedians feels like it's already several years old.

The Comedians premieres Thursday, April 9 at 10pm on FX.