I dearly wanted to love Flight Of The Conchords last year, but a number of factors prevented me from embracing it: the fact most plots are a variation on "someone leaves the band" or a "romantic gooseberry", that the songs are generally quite forgettable (admit it), and the intentionally tiresome characterizations. It's shot through with an indie aesthetic (visually and in the dialogue) that just comes across as smug and distancing to me, too. The season 2 premiere toys with the idea of reinvention for a few minutes, but it's business as usual before too long -- with one notable difference: the songs are actually worse...Bret (Bret McKenzie) and Jemaine (Jemaine Clement) are still struggling Kiwi folk-pop musicians trying to get a break in America. Following the events of the season 1 finale, their incompetent manager Murray (Rhys Darby) had fluked success with a rival band called "Crazy Dogggz", and has become a sharp-suited music exec in a plush skyscraper. However, his success hasn't had a positive knock-on effect for "Flight Of The Conchords", as they're still struggling for gigs.
Murray's split loyalty forces Jemaine and Bret to part company with their manager, to represent themselves. Encouragingly, they manage to land a toothpaste commercial for a women's-only brand called "Femident". Meanwhile, Murray realizes the Crazy Dogggz's stole their hit single from an obscure '90s Polish group, and is forced to give up his high-flying lifestyle and return to work at the New Zealand consulate.
The plot is certainly more robust than usual, which helped keep my interest in events. But, essentially, this is yet another riff on the idea of someone (in this case Murray) leaving, or being forced to leave, the Conchords triptych. It's actually laughable that the writers have so few ideas in their arsenal, and not a good sign for season 2 if they're still recycling ideas that became threadbare mid-season 1.
Clement and McKenzie are on record as saying season 2 was particularly difficult to write, because they'd exhausted their back-catalogue of comedy songs in season 1. Consequently, they've had the added burden of composing new songs to go along with fresh scripts. They've clearly spread themselves very thin, as the three songs in this episode are incredibly thin, fairly unfunny, and don't last very long. A few of the songs last year were "earworms", but the ones here burrow through one ear and plop out the other. Season 1's songs were often clumsily inserted into the narrative, so you'd think that would be a thing of the past (now they can write the songs to fit the plots precisely), but only the Femident jingle is relevant and necessary.
On the positive side, there were some good lines dotted about, and Rhys Darby is still the main reason to be watching. Someone give him his own series, as he's far more engaging than the leads (who, by design, resemble autistic social pariahs.) There was more comedy in Murray discovering his letter of resignation from the NZ consulate hadn't even been read (owing to the fact nobody goes into his office), than the rest of the episode put together.
Overall, FoTC is still a crushing disappointment to me. It's the TV version of a hipster indie comedy (hyped to annoyance, adored by a cultish clique, but essentially half-empty and running on fumes.) Flight Of The Conchords wants to be a witty, somnambulist Wes Anderson musical... but these Kiwi's are much funnier in their natural medium: music albums.
18 January 2009
HBO, 10pm
Writers: Jemaine Clement, Bret McKenzie & James Bobin
Director: James Bobin
Cast: Jemaine Clement (Jemaine), Bret McKenzie (Bret), Rhys Darby (Murray), Arj Barker (Dave) & Kristen Schaal (Mel)
