The Audacity Is More Radical And Better Then You'd Think

 

 

Even before I saw the first episodes of The Audacity I realized something that has made AMC an outlier in the world of 21^st century TV.  Ever since the first season of Mad Men debuted way back in 2007 it has been one of the constants in great television. Yet that brilliance is almost entirely focused in drama.

I don't just mean that they don't have comic masterpieces; I mean that in 19 years they've made almost no real effort to try comedy at all.  Which is bizarre when you consider that almost every major cable network, pay or basic, as well as all streaming services usually get in comedy first before they get into prestige drama. It was certainly true of HBO, then Showtime and definitely FX made some experiments. You can make that argument with every streaming service today.

By contrast while AMC has working in many genres within the would of drama and has done even a few intriguing things with unscripted programming in nearly two decades I can count their attempts on comedy on one hand and all of them, no matter how much potential they had whether the dark battle of the sexes Dietland or the intriguing Bob Odenkirk vehicle Lucky Hank got canceled after one season. In the 21^st century the only one that I recall lasting longer is Kevin Can Go F--- Himself which was more of deconstruction take of comedy then an actual comedy and either way just ran two seasons.

Considering that these days AMC's original series are, with the exception of Dark Winds, either part of the world of Anne Rice or Walking Dead spinoffs I was pleasantly surprised to see ads for an original AMC program while watching the current season of Dark Winds. Furthermore while The Audacity bore the imprint of a writer from Better Call Saul and Succession it made itself clear from the ads that it was going to be a comedy. Clearly a very bleak one (that much was clear from the promos) but a comedy, nevertheless. And in an era where every service is taking fewer risks when it comes to television AMC had either enough confidence or bravado to renew it for a second season before it even debuted. And despite the fact the early reviews have been decidedly mixed and by the very high standards of the network that's the equivalent of a pan I found myself admiring and even enjoying the first two episodes of the show.

This came as a surprise even to me because it was clear from the previews and even more so during the actual series that this is the kind of show I've started to openly loathe. It's a very black comedy set among Silicon Valley, which means its asking us to spend time with not only billionaires but the kind that we openly acknowledge will likely bring about the apocalypse. It's a comedy asking me to laugh at the nastiest behavior of so many privileged people which as I've written before, was becoming tiresome a decade ago and I've grown even less fond of now.  And as my viewers know a connection to Succession is one of those things that I would consider a red flag rather than a recommendation. Throw in all of my issues with all things involving the internet, tech and social media and I should despise The Audacity on site.

Yet I didn't. I agree its not a masterpiece by any standards and it does play into almost every horrible trope we've come to expect from the Valley in real life. I get why so many critics and viewers might be turned off by it, especially now. Yet I find it entertaining and often very amusing after two episodes. The fact that it seems to have been review bombed a bit in advance (it has an imdb.com rating of 5.3 despite the fact the first two episodes all average around 7) has more to do with the fact that there are no doubt a bunch of left-wing people who are annoyed that this show exists.  (Or who knows? Maybe the Musk's and Zuckerberg's of the world are leading the campaign to try and kill it because of how it makes them look.)

The show is center on a tech wizard known as Duncan played to perfection as a stunted manchild by Billy Magnussen. At the start of the series Duncan has leaked information about a merger that wasn't true and it has led to his stock prize to sink. We see him trying to confide in his shrink Joanne (Sally Goldberg) but after their session ends he keeps trying to invade her privacy.

Duncan is all the parts of Silicon Valley woven into a horrible package. He openly cheats on his wife with his chief executive officer but can't stand it when she does the same. He has no real involvement in raising his daughter Jamison and has to be reminded that orientation for her most recent school is coming up. We learn in one session that he basically bullied his previous partner to the point that he killed himself and feels no remorse of it. Its pretty clear he's been getting his best ideas from an employee who's name he doesn't know but who he feels no remorse in bullying. And he absolutely is determined to use his tech to stalk the people he feels are against him, which is everybody. He thinks there are no boundaries in the world and he thinks it should be all about him.

All of these are things that should make him loathsome to me. The reason I don't hate Duncan with the same feelings I do anyone at Waystar Royco is that he's so pathetic and basically not good at anything.  He's Silicon Valley's master of the universe but its clear that his wealth has done nothing to stop his wife Lili (Lucy Punch) from belittling him, from his CEO to going over his head and for him to unable to engage even in basic human interaction with his own daughter. He thinks the world should work like technology does and he seems irritated when he's even momentarily hits a bump and the first two episodes are nothing but bumps for him.

It helps that his therapist is no saint herself. Sarah Goldberg was Barry's ray of light for four seasons and like almost every female character in the first two decades of TV she was considered a buzzkill even though as Hader himself kept saying: "Barry kills people." Goldberg endured and as Joanne is playing someone who by any rational standard is more unpleasant then Duncan. She's been using the intelligence from her sessions with Silicon Valley titans to engage in insider training in order to make money and when Duncan discovers her first reaction is to buy a gun. She then spends her next session with a client, scrolling through guns and ignoring him. When Duncan harasses her in public she then goes to a bank but its clear she doesn't want to admit the fraud – or give the money back.

Aside from this Joanne is as bad a parent as anyone from the Valley. When her son Orson arrives from Boston because of his father's (her first husband's) bad health, she basically puts him in a guest room in the basement. She wants to get him into a good school, but its one she uses as a status symbol. We learn she and his father have fought against having Orson in custody (something Orson now knows) and she's been out of his life for so long she can't even remember his birthday. There's more evidence, listening to her give her sessions, that she's not even that good a therapist really, even if you set aside the inner training bit.

The thing is, while there are quite a few miserable characters in The Audacity there are actually some pretty good ones. Right now they are represented by those work for the VA, most notably Tom played by that exceptional talent Rob Corddry. Rob used to work in Silicon Valley and is now reduced to shilling for VA and trying to help those who are suffering. He's essentially begging billionaires for money and eventually he ends up at Duncan's company – against Duncan's will. Duncan was trying to get good PR but he wanted to hang out with soldiers because he thinks military is cool. When his chief executive goes over his head because she still wants to do good with their data, he very reluctantly goes along – and is so disconnected from reality that when he learns so much of the VA's information is on paper and floppy disks he's angry not because of the state of affairs but because this means his company will have to do work and he shirks the idea.

But I have to tell you two episodes in if there's a heart to The Audacity it is the children, mostly in early high school who are broken in individual ways from the non-existent parenting that the rich grownups are giving them. Jamison is being bullied by her parents into being diagnosed with a spectrum disorder so it will make it easier for them to frame their donation to Stanford as less of a bribe.  The discussions they have are done completely over her head and its clear her mother has no interest in her input. When Duncan takes his daughter out for cheeseburgers (for the sole purpose of spying on another billionaire) Jamison says she can get in on her own because this feels like cheating. Duncan doesn't think this is an issue.  "Cheaters never losers and losers never cheat," he tells her daughter with sincerity.

The Audacity makes it very clear that Joanne is just as neglectful. In addition to everything else during the first episode Orson gets locked into a basement crawl space and has to break out of it on his own. Joanne naturally assumes someone broke in to their house and its clear Orson didn't tell because he's rebelling against her bad behavior. When she drops him off at school she gives a lecture about Icarus that is just horrible parenting and doesn't bother to deal with orientation. His father has forgotten to send his transcript from Boston and he has to spend the day in 'the dungeon'. By this time Orson has gotten to know Jamison quite well and its clear that he has a crush on her.

There's also another child in this Tess, the daughter of XO who has a reputation as a trouble maker. She's already got a problem with prescription drugs and is driven to school in a driverless car. In an act of rebellion she glues a traffic cone to the hood, which paralyzes it there and causes all of the adults to be clueless. This is one of the funniest scenes in the series so far.

If there's a flaw in The Audacity to this point its that it has yet to figure out how to use its impressive cast to its full potential. Paul Adelstein, who plays Joanne's current husband is a psychiatrist who caters to so many of the wealthy by diagnosing them with spectrum disorders. While he frequently seems to be a good husband the writers haven't decided whether he has empathy or is clueless in his own way.  Simon Helberg, who plays Martin, should be in his element here as someone trying to design a virtual friend for teens yet basically he's had nothing to do in two episodes. By contrast Zack Galifiankis has done a lot in the two episodes as Carl Bardolph, one of Joanne's other patients, whose issues seem more genuine but who is listed as a guest star and you wish there was more of him and less of the regulars.

Yet despite these flaws I think The Audacity shows more promise then those on the internet might be inclined to give it at first glance. I realize that given the mood of the country these days and how much tech has done to create a satire set in the Valley might well seem not only in bad taste but less bizarre then real life. But I don't hold with the argument of bad timing, considering that in the last decade we've had to endure so many bleak and miserable dystopian series that Hollywood is clearly doing to mirror their distaste at the America we live in.  If anything that so much of The Audacity is spent with those teenagers are just as neglected as those who are far worse off is the kind of story we need more of in our society.  Nor do I buy the idea that we're not prepared to laugh at the fictional antics of the rich and powerful considering that's essentially all comedy is basically done only at those of the rich and powerful. And frankly I find the jokes on this show far funnier then much of what I've seen on late night over the last few years too.

Don't get me wrong: The Audacity is not a masterpiece by the standards of AMC's best dramas. But the fact is, given everything that's been hitting cable over the last few years, there's something bold about the fact that AMC in particular is willing to experiment again with the kind of bold programming it did when it was at its peak in the 2010s.  Even if it ends up being a failure there's something, well, audacious about the fact that they're willing to give two seasons for a very black comedy. That should be admired if nothing else.

My score: 3.5 stars.