Andy Daly and Anna Gunn have had markedly different sorts of careers. Daly is a critical darling, a beloved writer, comedian, and actor whose Comedy Central series, Review, has been lauded for the entirety of its two-season run. Gunn, on the other hand, was the resident punching bag of Breaking Bad fans around the country, with her character so regularly maligned that Gunn felt the need to pen a New York Times op-ed about it.
But both are simultaneously facing a watershed career moment, albeit for entirely opposite reasons: Daly’s Review will — to the guttural moans of TV critics everywhere — conclude after its upcoming third season, and those same TV critics will likely be eager to see whether Daly’s talents can translate as transcendently elsewhere. And though Gunn recently starred in a now-canceled Fox detective drama, Gracepoint, she has yet to find another Breaking-Bad-esque role worthy of her (or a role that won’t cause fans to create Facebook groups founded on the very principle of hating her).
It’s strangely appropriate, then, that the two will face down the Hollywood dragons together by co-starring in a new ABC comedy. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show, called Chunk and Bean, will center on the “unlikely friendship of two misfits,” the aforementioned Chunk and Bean, which, of course they’re misfits with those names, Jesus. The two “benefit from having two very different sets of parents living next door to each other.” Two of those parents — Chunk’s, to be specific — will be played by Daly and Gunn. Writers Ed Herro and Brian Donovan based the series on their own lives, though neither of them is named Chunk or Bean, and Chris Koch will direct the series.
Though the show’s intriguing from a talent perspective, the character descriptions of Gunn and Daly’s Stuart and Connie Dawson are slightly troubling from a “will Anna Gunn ever have a non-shrill female role to play” perspective. Stuart is a therapist, as is Connie, but Stuart is described as “less of a controlling parent than Connie, though he tends to go along with what Connie is doing.” Hopefully she’ll give the role more depth than that, but damn, can Gunn catch a break here? How about next time y’all give her the “kooky hippie with a marijuana plant” role next time, hm?
