Difficult People

I never heard of this show till It showed up on my streaming service so I thought I'd give it a try and what a surprise. I loved loved loved this show it deserves way more credit then it got. It reminds me of Seinfeld , broad city all out into one. I loved how the characters are awful but it's real awful. I wish more people would talk about this show it deserves more credit. One of the best comedies ever.

Two aspiring entertainers in their 30s and brimming with bitterness, slam everyone and everything in this almost ridiculously diverse comedy show that veers strongly into dark territory. Season 1 is a riot, with all it's pop culture references and situations gone awry, but the cracks are showing by Season 2.

This show just doesn't have enough juice to sustain itself and the writers aren't helping all that much. It's like they pitched this via a few YouTube videos and maybe that's the format this comedy is best suited to. By Season 3 it's two people hating everything, with a few tired anti-Trump/Christian jokes that sit awkwardly amongst very familiar Jewish stereotypes and the odd mushy scene to add some artificial "heart" to the proceedings. There's also no common storyline running through the episodes, so it's like a Jewish skit show by the end.

I like dark comedy, but maybe they should have done what the Brits do - knock out two short seasons and call it a day and hope for cult status.

Difficult people is about two really awful people who go around being awful and catty and mean.

This can work, as it does in You're the Worst. But Difficult People is far less ambition. It basically feels like a couple of comedians who thought it would be funny to make a show where they just do insult comedy every week.

The first episode was *mildly* amusing. I laughed once or twice, even though I found the characters unlikable and the premise thin. The second episode had all the flaws of the first but was even less funny. So that's the last episode I'll be watching.

It's a little inaccessible. The jokes would be funny, if I actually knew what the heck they were talking about. I don't live under a rock either, I follow pop culture. The casting is terrible. Is her dumb boyfriends supposed to be a straight man who is interested in this fat, uncharismatic, self-absorbed girl? He is an unnecessary character; somehow, he doesn't hang out with Billy and Julie, but he is in no way a foil to Billy. He's like a redundant piece of furniture. I think pretty much everything about this show (with the exception of Julie's costume design) is terrible. They somehow manage to make her appear smaller. But honestly, she's not cute, and she's barely funny, and this entire show is pretty indulgent. If you're not cute, be funny at least.

This is a show for a very narrow demographic. The range of pop culture put downs is vast. It's hard to imagine anyone but gay, full-time couch potatoes understanding all of it. I come close to that category, but I'm old. Younger versions of me will probably get more of it. And, you've got to be quick to even take it all in. The show may be just a so-so framework for a barrage of rat-a-tat-tat jokes, but oh, what jokes!

The lines are tossed off so fast and are so all-over-the-place topically they barely register. If you waste time laughing, you'll miss the next joke. Not many shows can work in a line like "If I've learned anything, it's that there are limits to even what Viola Davis can make plausible." Now, for me, that's funny. And it's funny because it's true. But I can easily understand that a lot of people would be baffled. Not only do you have to know who Viola Davis is, you have to have seen enough of her work to know that she's been in some real turkeys.

I especially like some of the side players, truly original characters we haven't seen before. E.g., the transgender server who's a 911 conspiracy theory nut. When she says to a co-worker, "I wish you'd been on Flight 93," it's stunning. I'm not sure what my reaction was. Did I laugh because it was funny, or was I just astonished by the anything-is-fair-game attitude? I don't know, and frankly, I don't care. I was entertained, and in the broadest sense of the word.

You may hate the characters, and you may not like their constantly snarky attitude. But you have to admire how they can simultaneously celebrate and fearlessly skewer the values American pop culture has engendered in us all.