Eastbound & Down is a six-part HBO half-hour comedy about Kenny Powers (McBride), a failed Major League baseball player forced to return to his hometown and become a substitute P.E teacher when his off-field antics get him the sack. Kenny's a podgy, mullet-haired, arrogant, offensive oaf with a tenuous grasp of reality and inability to see how others see him. He moves in with his soft touch brother Dustin (John Hawkes), his religious wife Cassie (Jennifer Irwin) and their three kids. At school, he quickly starts trying to ignite a romance with high school crush April Buchanon (Katy Mixon) when he discovers she's also teaching classes there, despite learning she's engaged to Principal Cutler (Andrew Daly).
In essence, it's a comedy where a misguided, dislikable burn-out returns to the bosom of his hometown and fails to realize that his antisocial, narcissistic behaviour rubs the community up the wrong way. Well, everyone apart from idolizing teacher Steve Janowski (Steve Little), an acolyte that Kenny still can't help mocking, and the sanguine Principal, who's excited to have a bonafide "local hero" on staff. In the great tradition of comedy monsters, Kenny's oblivious to the fact most people think he's a repugnant creep, and has fooled himself into believing he's still a big shot everyone should idolize. One of the few funny moments finds Kenny cruising down the school corridor basking in the adoration of the students, but it's a scene revealed to be entirely in Kenny's warped perception of their derisory stares.
While I can see the potential in this idea, Eastbound & Down does itself no favours by having a lead character with zero redeeming features. McBride works best (if he works at all) as a supporting player, so giving him an extended spotlight felt exhausting. What little humour there is in Kenny Powers' personality ebbed away after 10-minutes. Co-writer/director Jody Hill (who worked with McBride on The Foot Fist Way) appears hell-bent in trying to create a new type of comedy where the "heroes" are reprehensible freaks, but it feels like a pointless endeavour to me. As with Hill's divisive Observe & Report, the absence of any redeeming qualities in the main character will have a wearing effect on most of the audiences, and my own tolerance for Kenny became threadbare after only one episode.
Overall, I'm all for self-delusional losers in comedy, but Eastbound & Down appears to have burnt the recipe book and cooked the wrong ingredients in creating its anti-hero. If you're as insensitive and boorish as Kenny Powers, you may get a kick out of seeing someone as odious as yourself reflected on TV... but I'd take a long hard look at yourself if that's the case. The rest of us are probably best off leaving McBride and Hill to their shock-comedy posturing.
1 October 2009
FX / FX HD, 10pm
written by: Ben Best, Jody Hill & Danny McBride directed by: Jody Hill starring: Danny McBride (Kenny Powers), Katy Mixon (April Buchanon), John Hawkes (Dustin Powers), Andrew Daly (Terrence Curler), Ben Best (Clegg), Jennifer Irwin (Cassie Powers), Steve Little (Steve Janowski), Sylvia Jefferies (Tracy), Ethan Alexander McGee (Dustin Jr.) & Craig Robinson (Baseball Player)
