If you like fart jokes, bong-smoking dogs that talk, seeing a dad flip off his little daughter and a guy take a bowel movement into his neighbor’s boot - and c’mon, who doesn’t — then I’d flip on FX Thursday nights at 10 beginning this week. That’s when rookie comedy Wilfred debuts and sophomore half-hour Louie returns.
I took in the two episodes Monday night at a premiere event FX threw in Hollywood, and spent an hour laughing. A lot.
If you have ever seen Louie CK, you know what his show is and what to expect. And that’s a good thing with the second season premiere. If you haven’t seen him or his show before, tune in and be forewarned, this ain’t The Cosby Show. While he actually does tug at the heart strings in a couple places, make no mistake about it, he is here to make you laugh by any means necessary, and mission accomplished. I’ll admit I hadn’t seen the show since its premiere last year, and now I’m kind of kicking myself.
The only thing about it I didn’t understand is not about the show but about television in general: how he can rattle off a monologue using the word “shit” time after time after time, but when he drops an f-bomb it gets bleeped.
As for FX’s newbie, I’d read a lot of reviews about Wilfred, and don’t remember seeing too many bad ones, so my bar was a little higher. If you haven’t heard about it - it’s an American remake of a comedy about a guy (played by Elijah Wood) who sees a neighbor’s dog as a talking human in a dog suit (played by Jason Gann, who did the same for the original Aussie version), while everyone else sees it as just a regular canine.
It’s the kind of ridiculous premise that many networks wouldn’t risk - which is why most network’s comedies tend to look alike - and stink.
FX has been on a little acquisition run of late, snatching the rights to films like Super 8 and The Hangover 2. And now it seems FX might have added another player in Wilfred, assuming viewers buy into such a crazy premise. Hey, if Al Bundy can land Sofia Vergara on the hottest comedy on television, then a man dressed in a dog suit smoking dope out of a Gatorade bottle and asking to watch Matt Damon movies is almost a documentary by comparison.
A lot of the fun comes from the dog doing whatever it wants because he is a dog and can get away with it, some of which most men would love to do, like when he nuzzles into the cleavage of a well-endowed nurse. Then there are the other actions most men probably wouldn’t enjoy as much, like when he dry-humps a stuffed animal or eats a squirrel. I say “most” men, because, hey, you never know.
Before the screening, I was chatting with FX PR guy John Solberg and one of the show’s stars, Fiona Gubelmann. Solberg said that people are either going to love or hate Wilfred. Gubelmann chimed in that was fine with her, as she’d rather have something that gets a strong reaction either way than something that people just kind of shrug off. She’s absolutely right, but then again, in the dress she was wearing, I would have agreed with just about anything she said.
But one thing you can’t argue with - Wilfred is like nothing else you’ll see on American television. Which is just how FX chief John Landgraf likes it. I don’t mind saying I hope viewers agree.
