And I’ve seen many Andy Buttons (Joseph May) here in the Santa Clarita Valley, just as phony as you please. And the “head of comedy,” whose name I missed because I spent all of the time gaping at her utter, quiet idiocy, oh god there are too many of those here! Watching these repulsive people, I grit my teeth at first, then chuckle, then laugh outright because I’m floored at how accurately Crane and Klarik have pinpointed them. Working in television themselves, with Crane having co-created Friends and Klarik creating Half & Half and then co-creating the short-lived sitcom The Class with Crane, they have so obviously experienced what the central couple of the show go through, with casting sessions and network meetings and the like. This is how therapy is done in Hollywood. They make it into television shows.
Beverly and Sean Lincoln (Tamsin Greig of the personal favorite Black Books, and Stephen Mangan) are the celebrated creators of Lyman’s Boys, winning a BAFTA award when they are introduced. Merc Lapidus (Pankow), saunters over to them and offers them a slot on his network’s schedule, to create an American version of Lyman’s Boys. Lapidus never says what network he’s from, but based on there being a talking dog show and a “Debra Winger thing,” both of which smack of total desperation, it sounds like NBC. For legal reasons, of course, the network remains unnamed.
Sean wants to do it and Beverly doesn’t, because she thought they had agreed never to be involved with Hollywood people. But she agrees to it and off they go, Sean believing that a deal is in place for the show to go directly to air, particularly because the network does not want them to change a word of the scripts and is supportive of having Julian Bullard (special guest star Richard Griffiths) recreate his role of Lyman, the headmaster of a boys’ boarding school. But they want to see him audition, to gauge how suitable he would be, and Lapidus decides that he wants him to try an American accent, and the whole thing goes down hard. They don’t want Julian. They need someone that audiences can relate to, somebody not British, without a funny accent. They want Matt LeBlanc.
It snowballs from there. Soon enough, after meeting LeBlanc and after the network cheers at having gotten LeBlanc for the show, Sean and Beverly are forced into these circumstances concocted by others, with not much power. Beverly hates Hollywood from the start, but Sean gradually gets sucked into it. She can’t believe that people are like this, which reminded me of my mother, who also hated Southern California from the start, and still does. Though I didn’t quite see from the beginning what she didn’t like, since I was trying to establish something for myself here, I grew to see how ridiculous this all was. I laugh at and sympathize with Beverly’s plight at the same time. I am her.
Since this is a British co-production, there are only seven episodes, which is exactly the right amount. Back in March, I read a novel by Robby Benson called Who Stole the Funny?, about a sitcom director who reluctantly goes back to work, only because his son needs medical treatment that Directors Guild of America insurance can cover. Benson gives terrific insight into directing sitcoms, on a Friends-like sitcom, but it was horrifying to read. It’s hard to believe that people could be as awful as they were in that novel, but Benson had probably seen many things and put them all in. I liked Benson’s storytelling style, but I never want to read that novel again.
It’s nearly the same thing with Episodes, brilliant, horrifying, and scary all at the same time. There are certain scenes I never want to see again, but when there’s time away from the production, the show is fun to watch and very funny. The entire cast is disturbingly dedicated to their roles, especially those at the network, which makes me wonder if any of them felt the need to shower for hours after playing their parts. Kathleen Rose Perkins doesn’t seem as bad as that, as stuck as Carol is, hoping that there’s a cure for Merc’s wife’s blindness so Merc can leave her for her.
And then the capstone. In episode 4, Matt loses his custody hearing and calls Sean (he doesn’t like Beverly), drunk, telling him to pick him up at a bar in Santa Clarita. My jaw dropped. I live in Santa Clarita. It’s a refuge for those who work in the industry, but don’t want to live near any part of the industry. I never expected this!
Matt tells Sean that he’s at a bar near the courthouse. The only courthouse in Santa Clarita is near the Valencia library. That building is not far from the Valencia Town Center Mall. Across the street from that building is a car dealership, and across the street from the left side is City Hall with an empty restaurant building next to it. This is not nitpicking to prove them wrong, but rather a nod of acknowledgement that you can put anything in Santa Clarita and it works because this valley has no personality of its own. Plus, Matt probably wouldn’t want a public bar such as the ones tucked inside the Elephant Bar restaurant on McBean Parkway, and inside Lazy Dog Cafe in the Patios area of the Valencia Town Center Mall. Those are the only ones fairly close enough to the courthouse.
When Sean and Beverly drive from the mansion that’s on loan to them from the network because they just finished shooting a reality show there and have six weeks left on the lease, and arrive in Santa Clarita, they pull into the parking lot of that bar which is so obviously not of Santa Clarita, and yet the atmosphere is perfectly accurate, right down to the sad orangish lighting in the lot. Crane and Klarik know it well.
Unfortunately, the DVD contains only biographies and a gallery of 10 behind-the-scenes photos. There’s nothing else, most likely for legal reasons, no audio commentaries, no behind-the-scenes documentaries, because who would want to admit on camera or on a commentary track that all this is real? It’s unbelievable enough as it is, and those who caused Crane and Klarik to make this show would not want to know that they were the inspiration. Real-life Hollywood craziness remains hidden because they want to continue working.
I love Episodes and yet I want to run far away from it, to put my fingers in my ears, squeeze my eyes shut, and shout nonsense in order to shut it out because it can’t be real. Oh, but it is, and I have lived it long enough to know. I love comedies where there’s no mad rush for laughs, where they gradually build, and this is one of them. But most of all, I am forever grateful to Episodes for giving me my freedom. I can move on to my promised land, leaving all this crap behind, having laughed and cringed it all away.
