Friends, you might want to sit down. You might want to make sure you’re steady. Because two things are about to happen that might just rock your world if you’re a regular reader of this series. First, I’m going to say something good about the Max app. Second, I’m going to say something good about a scripted comedy made in this decade.
That’s right, it’s possible hell has frozen over.
Certainly, you can read a lot of articles about what happened to the app formerly known as HBO Max in the past year. Cutting half the letters off its name and just calling it “Max” seems to have been extremely on-the-nose, since it seems like about half the content has been cut out of it. It’s gone from being a location known for its prestige programming to the home of 175,000 episodes of House Hunters. Along the way, the head of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, has gone on to be one of the most reviled people in Hollywood, although I bet a lot of other media moguls quietly worship him.
I’m not saying Max has had no original programming in the past year, but most of it has been a dark, mumbly mess like House of the Dragon. It’s great to have these massive prestige dramas, but it’s also great to give us programming that doesn’t break our hearts. Personally I can’t even watch Euphoria without feeling like I should report myself to some agency.
Enter Bookie.
Bookie, created by comedian Sebastian Maniscalco and legendary TV maker Chuck Lorre, is a comedy driven around a single conceit: what if a bookie just wasn’t very good at his job? It’s sort of taking The Sopranos and taking out the really dark stuff.
Criticism of Bookie has been pretty harsh, with the prevailing opinion being that it’s strictly light-duty, barely one step removed from those studio-shot sitcoms that dominated the 20th century. It’s not prestige TV, they say. It’s playing everything for an easy laugh, they say. Folks deserve better, they say.
You know what I say? Sometimes it’s ok to be entertained. I’m not the only one who retreats into the sitcoms of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s when I want to turn my brain off. When the world gets to be too much, sometimes I want to go where everybody knows your name. Sometimes I want to know that they’ll be there for me when the rain starts to pour. And when my workplace seems a bit too much, I want to know that even people in a paper company in Scranton can learn to love each other.
Bookie may not be legendarily great television. But it’s good television. It’s funny.. Not all the time — the very first episode is just a wee bit transphobic, for example — but it’s funny enough that I can see the wry humor in my own life when I watch it. It owes a lot the observational humor of Pulp Fiction and even to workplace sitcoms like The Bob Newhart Show. It doesn’t try to shock you with sexualization of everything or tragic circumstances. It’s just entertaining.
Boomers? What boomers?
Don’t get me wrong. I see nothing wrong with boomers. What has bothered me, though, is the trope of the ultra-powerful boomer alpha male who has whiny, sniveling children who don’t deserve his fortunes. Succession, I’m looking at you. It’s a powerful part of our culture today and you can see echoes of it in real life and in practically every genre of fiction.
Bookie, however, doesn’t center around a boomer. It centers around the very GenX trio of Danny, Ray, and Hector. They aren’t captains of industry, to be sure. But they’re our protagonists nonetheless. They’re not portrayed as whiny man-children, they just haven’t managed to succeed. Obviously this isn’t the only show to have this sort of plot. It’s just a welcome refuge from the obsession that TV has with boomers who press their thumbs on their millennial and GenX kids.
Maniscalco gonna Maniscalco
I would look Sebastian Maniscalco right in the face this very moment and say he’s not a great actor. He plays Sebastian Maniscalco playing someone else, in every role he’s in. He’s easily flustered, cynical to the nth degree, and neither as handsome nor as menacing as he might want to be. But on the other hand, he knows his wheelhouse. Since lockdown ended, he’s emerged as a dependable character actor who occasionally gets put in a lead role, always playing the same part. Frankly there’s a great history in Hollywood of just that sort of thing. If you don’t dig his schtick, if his comedy doesn’t make you laugh, you probably won’t like him in this or anything else. But I’d disagree, because I think he’s hilarious.
Lorre gonna Lorre
The sitcom work of Chuck Lorre is legendary. Whether you know him from Young Sheldon, The Big Bang Theory, Mike & Molly, Two and a Half Men, or any of his lesser sitcom fare, his resume stands alone. He’s known for taking characters you shouldn’t care about and making you care about them. You may not be a fan of his belly-laugh, joke-a-minute style, but it works.
This is Lorre’s third swing into streaming territory. His first, Disjointed, was an off-the-rack sitcom that would have been at home on broadcast. His second, The Kominsky Method, dealt with aging in a funny and distinctly non-network friendly way. Now, with Bookie, you’ll either feel like he’s hit his stride in creating streaming fare or you’ll wish he went back to making reliable yuckfests for CBS. That’s up to you. I’m not a true worshipper at the altar of Lorre, but I think he succeeds more than he fails. He succeeds with Bookie by making a show that’s just off-kilter enough to keep it off broadcast while maintaining the low-stakes feeling of a network sitcom. All I can say is, I enjoy it.
Watch Bookie on Max
That’s right, Max actually has something that I like watching. No guarantee it won’t be taken off sometime soon, shelved for the tax credit or sold off to Prime Video. So, watch it while you can. Here’s a trailer.
