Wikipedia, which knows more about humor than anything or anyone, lists the following TV shows as examples of “cringe comedy”: The Office, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Alan Partridge, House, Nathan For You, Peep Show, Louie, Freaks and Geeks, Flight of the Conchords, and Mr Bean. What makes me cringe is the lack of HBO’s The Comeback, Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King’s brilliant fake reality show.
It’s hard to watch, yet impossible to turn off — Kudrow’s insecure former sitcom star Valerie Cherish is self-involved and extremely shallow, yet she’s still a good person who desperately wants to please. In last night’s episode, one of the best in the show’s run, Cherish, the star of show-within-a-show Seeing Red, created by her rival Paulie G, has to give Seth Rogen, who’s playing a fictionalized version of Paulie G, a blowjob. It’s super confusing, but works in the context of the episode, and Valerie doesn’t mind doing the scene itself (which she, the star, read in the script, but still didn’t decline to participate in) so much as she hates the idea of people thinking she actually gave that ogre Paulie a BJ when they worked together a decade prior.
BuzzFeed spoke to Kudrow and Patrick King about what transpired.
As King described the Paulie G.-Valerie symbiosis to BuzzFeed News: “Is he abusing her, or is she abusing her by taking this job?”
Kudrow answered, saying, “As an actress, you don’t really get to say no — except you can sometimes say, ‘I’m not comfortable with that. I’m not going to do it.’ And she could’ve.”
Instead, Valerie lets out her anger in an improvisation that takes everyone aback. In the blowjob scene’s first take, after Mitch asks her to walk over, Valerie looks at the camera and says, “Walk? It’s been a long day. Why don’t you just RAPE me.” “Cut!” yells Paulie G. “Who were you talking to?” a freaked-out Rogen asks. (Via)
In stepped Seth Rogen:
In the end, Rogen rescues Valerie from both Paulie G. and herself. Paulie G. suggests an active role for Valerie in executing the sex act, wanting the camera to show her head going up and down and Rogen’s Mitch pushing her down. Valerie is willing to do it, but Rogen says: “In all honesty, though, I don’t even want to see me get a blowjob. It’s fucking gross. It should all play off camera, right?” Rogen uses his star power over Paulie G., who wants his approval. To the relieved Valerie, Rogen says, “Got you, Gingersnaps.”
“Seth on the show is the hero that saves Valerie,” said King. “When we started talking to Seth’s management, my first pitch was, ‘And he’s the hero.’ That was the most important thing: The biggest person on the set would be the most sensitive.” (Via)
I imagine this is what shooting every episode of Californication was like, except for the part when David Duchovny never said getting a blowjob is “f*cking gross.”
Now that’s how you do cringe comedy.
