Bored To Death: The Case of the Missing Screenplay

Way back in the far-off, idealistic days of September 2009, HBO premiered a clever, entertaining show about a despondent novelist who takes up a double life as a private detective. It was a fun, literate series with an interesting cast and scripting that was intellectual without being stuffy. But those days are apparently gone. Creator Jonathan Ames and HBO took a whopping three episodes to abandon the central premise of Bored To Death for a nearly joyless, navel-gazing half our of television.

I'm not ready to call Bored To Death a flop just yet. Maybe next week things will pick up where they left off last week and we can forget "The Case of the Missing Screenplay" ever happened. This episode was nothing if not a chain of missed opportunities. It could have aired after ten episodes and not changed a single thing about the tiny bit of plot arc in the series. I actually wish it had come later in the season so it could feel like a fun excursion from the formula instead of an inability to stick to a premise.

The whole episode revolves around Jonathan's out-of-nowhere opportunity to do a script revision for arthouse favorite Jim Jarmusch. When the director hands over the script, Jonathan promptly loses it after an aborted makeout session with a girl who turns out to be the 16-year-old daughter of a therapist. Aside from some not-awful sodomy jokes, this is a plot right out of a bland sitcom. It's artificial, cliche and horribly predictable.

What's more, this plot also serves as a failed opportunity to let Zack Galifianakis have a standout moment. Ray's subtly manipulative girlfriend convinces him to go to therapy, so Jonathan tries to get him to retrieve the lost script by attending a session with daddy/shrink. I would have loved for this to result in a therapy scene with Galifianakis, but it was not to be. Instead Ray has a painful session and Jonathan shows up for a fake appointment to try to get the script himself. Cue a completely unnecessary, masturbatory scene of series creator Jonathan Ames once again speaking through his same-named character as if he's not supposed to be a somewhat pathetic nebbish.

Also, because it's HBO we got our first gratuitous nude scene this week when George takes a young lover to soothe his broken heart about an ex-wife played by Laila Robins. We'll probably see her and her new man, a creep played by Oliver Platt, in future episodes.

Because this is a comedy about a downtrodden intellectual who nobody understands and has just the hardest life of having rich friends and a cool job, Jonathan gets passed over for Charlie Kaufman to do the script revision. In other words, the whole episode was a waste for the characters, too.

Best Moment: Ray's pants-less conversation with his girlfriend. It was entertaining and it deepened his character, so it was an outlier for the episode.

Biggest Laugh: I'm also giving this one to Zach Galifianakis for any given scene of this episode. He often seems like he's on a completely different show, but this week that worked in his favor.

Episode Rating: 2/5- Ray was good, George was okay. Everything else was entirely uninteresting, unfunny and unnecessary. I sincerely hope next week brings Bored To Death back to form.