TV Hype: Maron Is A Meta Show About LA, Family Tree Rotting

Maron just premiered on IFC and it's bulging with so-cal references and inside jokes, which I doubt will go well outside of the so-cal. For us in so-cal it's gold, solid gold I tells you. In episode 1,  Legacy Comics of Glendale makes an appearance and is mistakenly said to be in Irvine. After comedian and main star of the show Maron goes to great lengths to find an Internet troll who hates him we get a ride through greater LA with the mention of In-N-Out no less.

Maron is still a bad show.

Maron's problem as a show is it is beyond meta and self-referential. Maron actually tells the audience as well as the other characters he isn't funny and he is right. The writing is also nothing new story wise even if it's really accurate at describing bloggers.

It reminds me of the recent Ben Hoffman show, but with an actual story instead of Ben just going around LA doing random things. I was wrong, so very wrong to think given Ben Hoffman a script would make his show better. Watching Maron I realize they are both not funny and the concept about their lives so like Larry David only works so well with them.

Check Maron out for yourself here with the first two episodes streaming for free on IFC.com



Family Tree coming Sunday is awful and  I haven't seen an entire episode or anything, but it's such a cheap rip-off of Arrested Development and to try and cash in when Arrested hits Netflix is pathetic. I thought it was a rip off of Christopher Guest's films which include a Mighty Wind and Best in Show. Learning it's really him making it is so sad. I though somone was cheaply paroding his work, but he just fell off from making something truly funny. Chris O'Dowd as the lead adds to that sadness, but luckily he'll be back for The I.T. Crowd Finale, which is to be filmed in a few weeks.