Skip to main content

Sad Sacks (and Funny Guys): An Advance Review of Season Two of HBO's "The Life and Times of Tim"

Imagine a world where the very simplest of actions, the most basic of decisions, could produce a flood of absurd consequences.

You'd likely be too terrified to even step outside of your box-sized Manhattan apartment but for Tim, the hero and titular character of HBO's animated comedy The Life and Times of Tim seems to have not heeded the lesson that if you stick your hand in the flames, you're likely to get burned.

Season Two of HBO's cheeky The Life and Times of Tim begins tonight and finds Tim (voiced by series creator Steve Dildarian) attempting to get out of a slew of bizarre circumstances that he has found himself in by dint of being, well, Tim.

Whether it's his possible replacement at the nebulous company Omnicorp by a homeless man named Vince (guest star Tony Hale), thanks to his efforts to grow a beard, or suffering through a terrible revival of a 1940s play ("it's like an Arthur Miller play... only slower") so that his friend Stu (Nick Kroll) can score from pot from his drug dealer-turned-actor. (Hint: don't use "tickets" as a codeword for pot to buy some from a wannabe actor.)

Throughout it all, Tim wanders through life being painfully average yet finding himself in some rather extraordinary and unusual situations (witness his attempts to prevent a jilted pharmaceutical saleswoman from driving them both of the George Washington Bridge in a stolen car in an upcoming episode). The results are hysterical yet painful, much like that of HBO's other animated comedy launching tonight, The Ricky Gervais Show, which the pay cabler is airing back-to-back in a one-hour block of they-didn't-just-say-that-did-they? comic mirth.

All in all, The Life and Times of Tim will make you laugh... and make you thankful that your life isn't quite as bad as poor Tim's. At the very least, your job isn't in danger of being taken over by a manipulative homeless man. Or, perhaps, maybe it is...



Season Two of The Life and Times of Tim begins tonight at 9:30 pm ET/PT on HBO.

Comments

Unknown said…
Thanks for the great review. We're so excitd we're back on the air... and awesome guest stars. Drama is my favorite episode. The Will Forte line never got old even after we heard it a hundred times in edit!
Jordan said…
Tony Hale was great as Vince, the homeless guy (sorry, I mean hobo). Tim plus The Ricky Gervais show is brilliant fun!
Lisa said…
TLaToT is a terrific show that hasn't gotten enough attention! So droll...great to read more praise for the series!

Popular posts from this blog

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season

Pilot Inspektor: CBS' "Smith"

I may just have to change my original "What I'll Be Watching This Fall" post, as I sat down and finally watched CBS' new crime drama Smith this weekend. (What? It's taken me a long time to make my way through the stack of pilot DVDs.) While it's on following Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars on Tuesday nights (10 pm ET/PT, to be exact), I'm going to be sure to leave enough room on my TiVo to make sure that I catch this compelling, amoral drama. While one can't help but be impressed by what might just be the most marquee-friendly cast in primetime--Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Jonny Lee Miller, Amy Smart, Simon Baker, and Franky G all star and Shohreh Aghdashloo has a recurring role--the pilot's premise alone earned major points in my book: it's a crime drama from the point of view of the criminals, who engage in high-stakes heists. But don't be alarmed; it's nothing like NBC's short-lived Heist . Instead, think of it as The Italian

The Daily Beast: "How The Killing Went Wrong"

While the uproar over the U.S. version of The Killing has quieted, the show is still a pale imitation of the Danish series on which it is based. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "How The Killing Went Wrong," in which I look at how The Killing has handled itself during its second season, and compare it to the stunning and electrifying original Danish series, Forbrydelsen , on which it is based. (I recently watched all 20 episodes of Forbrydelsen over a few evenings.) The original is a mind-blowing and gut-wrenching work of genius. It’s not necessary to rehash the anger that followed in the wake of the conclusion last June of the first season of AMC’s mystery drama The Killing, based on Søren Sveistrup’s landmark Danish show Forbrydelsen, which follows the murder of a schoolgirl and its impact on the people whose lives the investigation touches upon. What followed were irate reviews, burnished with the “burning intensity of 10,000 white-hot suns