My Week in TV Part III: Crashing Season 3 Premiere

This is a series where I capture a single week of TV watching but it's taken me over a month to get through that single week and it's shifting quite a bit as I go, so essentially this is just another TV review

Crashing (HBO)-Season Premiere-“Jaboukie”-As I often say, loving a past season of a show doesn’t necessarily translate to an equal enthusiasm in the present. Because of the increasing gaps in time between seasons, and the subsequent efforts needed to refamiliarize myself, it’s never a given that the content will hit me the same way.

I wrote a gushing fan letter to a producer involved with the show because the show’s second season meant a lot to me and if nothing else, we’ll always have season 2.

However, it’s going to be difficult to tell if Pete is still going to retain his sweetness which is a key part of what makes the show so refreshing.

Let’s look at this week’s story: Comedian protagonist goes on the road a lot where he has gets some laughs, enjoys a relative comfort and some dispassionate (yet loud) sex with a venue booker. He feels a bit lonely in a new way—lost through the grind of travel, so he invites a young comedian with him on the road for the rest of his tour. The new protégé picks up steam and when they get to New York City for comedian protagonist’s audition at a prime comedy spot, the protégé ends up impressing the booker so much that he displacing the now devastated comedian. It’s a solid plot that hinges a good twist, but the question: Is this sufficiently a Pete Holmes story?

It’s inevitable that Pete’s naiveté will disappear as he becomes more experienced but the show’s success relies on him retaining the same character in his core. Both Pete’s treatment of Ally and the way his sexual encounter is framed as uber-casual raise questions. In the case of Pete and Ally, the version of Pete I was hoping to see was the one who awkwardly felt compelled to convey his apologies to Ally and had the conviction to act on it. In the case of the sexual encounter, this should be big news. Sexual encounter #2 was a moral crisis and an interpersonal obstacle course. Maybe not knowing any details of sexual encounter #3 (or possibly more, who knows how many post-Ally rodeos he’s had?) is the point: It’s all just a blur to him. Personally, I want the scoop!

The upshot here is that this is only the season opener. This is one of the better examples where the episodic review format isn’t as great without context.