Showtime…my other boyfriend.

My first boyfriend is Bravo

I’m into the second season of “I’m Dying Up Here” and just read they might be cancelling it. Don’t you hate that? When you find out that you have such bad taste that you belong to the underdogs of the Nelson ratings system? Come on! There’s no way this show can be that bad to that many people. Number one, it’s main producer is Jim Carrey. That seems like it would be enough to stoke an audience to at least season 3. Get the word out please cause I don’t think that fact is being ignored, I think it’s actually not being heard. There are some stellar one-liners and zingers in season one like:

“Knock knock”

“Who’s there?”

“Nietzsche”

“Nietzsche who?”

“Nevermind, who cares, life has no intrinsic value, sorry I bothered you.”

The characters are multi-dimensional and have enough interesting conflict-resolution happening that by the end of an episode I can’t remember if I just watched one or three. It’s got a real dark undertone, which I could see 60% of people who check mark their favorite genre box as “comedy” not really into. The same kind of piggybacking comedy with drama that Judd Apatow tried to do in “Funny People” which is among one of my favorites, but just failed at the Rotten tomatoes ratings.

However, I think those who have interest in not just comedy, but the lives of comedian’s…the people who read their biographies and know more than just the stage persona’s will love this show. The character Nick Beverly seems an obvious rip from Bill Hicks and the actor who portrays him (Andrew Santino from “Girls” fame) does a fucking amazing job at nailing him down to the breathy grunts he takes on the mic. He also struggles with addiction like Hicks did and we get to see how he creates art out of his vices instead of hiding behind them. I can see dozens of old comedians wrapped into each and every character. I pick up Belushi in Ron Shack. I get Cosby in Raymond. I even had a dream with Brad Garrett in it and woke up mistakenly in love with with Roy Martin that’s how deep in here its gotten.

I have to say I’m a little disappointed in the acting the last three episodes. Between the two female leads there’s been an awkward amount of female bonding, it feels as though its creating tension on the set or something. Melissa Leo, who plays Goldie, worked a lot better for me when she was like the mother we all had and hated, but can now see the good side from our objective spectator positions. Now she’s just the mom we wished we had, but if we had really got would be shaking our heads thinking “What a fake”.

Please give this show a chance. I’m afraid falling ratings will leave me hanging and I’ll be dying down here.