I am rarely happy to be dead wrong about something.
When the third season of “Eastbound and Down” was on the air, I would have sworn that it was the end of the series. That wasn’t just empty guesswork, either. Everyone involved with the show saw that third season as an endgame of sorts, and at the end of the final episode, it certainly felt like it was over.
However, now that they are officially gearing up for a fourth season, I am delighted. When I was at WonderCon this weekend, I spoke to a number of the cast members, and Danny McBride was last up. I knew I wanted to talk to him about how crazy things get in “This Is The End,” but more importantly, I wanted to see how he was feeling as they get ready to start working on this new season.
What I love about the idea they have is that it felt unnatural to let Kenny Powers have a happy ending. I don’t dislike the character, but he doesn’t really seem like the sort of character who would really be happy out of the limelight, away from the life he’d built for himself. Katy Mixon wasn’t in nearly enough of season three, and I’m excited to see what happens with Kenny as both husband and father.
It impressed me last year that they managed to give Kenny a baby, let him still be unfiltered Kenny Powers, and yet never make it seem like that baby was in harm’s way. That was not an easy narrative tightrope to walk, and they pulled it off perfectly. It feels like this new season could go anywhere. There’s nothing left dangling and unresolved from last season, which has to be exciting for Jody Hill, Ben Best, David Gordon Green, and everyone else involved in figuring out where Kenny’s headed.
We’ll have more on season four of “Eastbound and Down” as they get underway with production, and in the meantime, you can see Danny McBride in “This Is The End” on June 13, 2013.