In recent years, Darren Star has had a hit on Netflix with "Emily in Paris," a show that, depending on your point of view, is either a death sentence for TV comedy or a surface-level sunny excursion whose idle pleasures they are just that. . Star, the creator of "Sex and the City" and "Melrose Place," has a knack for taking the viewer through soft, luxurious settings.
What could be the problem, or one of them, of his latest series for Netflix, which he created together with Jeffrey Richman. "Uncoupled" casts Neil Patrick Harris as Michael Lawson, a Haute Manhattan real estate agent whose long-term relationship, with a character played by Tuc Watkins, falls apart before Michael knows it's broken. Michael is forced to carry on with work and start dating, all while he pretends that he isn't devastated.
Creators: Jeffrey Richman, Darren Star
Stars: Neil Patrick Harris, Tisha Campbell, Brooks Ashmanskas
The problem is that the show seems to be distracted by all the pleasures surrounding Michael's defiant character, refusing to sit still and offer much insight into what a midlife break would look like, or mean, for a man who's been in a monogamous relationship for 17 years. The show throws its shaky, grotesque energy of "Emily in Paris" against a theme and character too tearful to generate sparks.
Michael's professional life is largely devoted to finding the perfect home for a society doyenne played by Marcia Gay Harden, assisted by her colleague played by Tisha Campbell. Both Harden and Campbell are great fun actors here, but they both have a hard time playing Harris, who has made the decision to play Michael not just sad and sorrowful, but also bitter and upset. What happened to him is clearly upsetting, but Harris' performance reduces audience likability over time. There's little that's light or airy about this character, making the constant throwing off of the world around him seem tonally jarring, or like a trade-off.
The idea of the end of a long-term gay relationship, and the unknown nature of what appears to be single and eligible in a world that accepts gay people but has pushed them toward marriage, is fertile territory. Which is why it's disappointing that so much of what happens in “Uncoupled” is completely surreal, or close to it. Michael confronts the couples therapist whose care led to his breakup while the mental health professional moonlights as a drag performer; the therapist, in the role of "Miss Communication", curses him for his "whiny voice" and his narcissism. (That's an accurate criticism, coming from a source we have a hard time taking seriously: What therapist would so savagely attack a former client, whether in character or not?) Elsewhere, Michael's attempts to re-enter the group dates are completely catastrophic, with a potential partner trying to inject him with Botox into a private region of his body; another, a millennial, explains the concept of PrEP, the use of prophylactic medications to prevent HIV transmission.
The first couple of these examples feel like the old "Sex and the City" formula used the wrong way: On that show, the unexpectedness of the characters' encounters, often Samantha's, became fodder for the conversation about the quirks of human nature, and the unpredictability of the heart. Here, the characters exist solely in relation to Michael and his self-esteem group, as the world around him simply reflects that he is the only sane man left. (No wonder he's single!) As for the case of Michael learning about PrEP for the first time (hard to believe for a connected and worldly gay man living in New York), it's a flat scene that allows him to express disgust. by the very concept, lecturing his prospective partner about "where did you get your liberties."
Everyone can and should make their own decision when it comes to things like PrEP, but the instant rise in Michael's anger reveals that the character is, once again, unyielding in his ways and a bit windy in his manner. disgust for those who do not meet their goals. Harris doesn't let us in on the joke that's in the script, that Michael is self-aggrandizing to the extreme. The generation gap material here could have led to a real understanding of who Michael is; He gestures "disengaged" in this way when his young date brushes him off, calling him a "bitter old queen". But then the zazzy music starts and the scene ends, just as we were getting somewhere. We switch to lunch with Michael and two friends (Brooks Ashmanskas and Emerson Brooks), who vaguely broach the subject with a few sexual hints and jokes, and then the subject changes.
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