GETTING ON/JA’IME: PRIVATE SCHOOL GIRL

***/**1/2 (out of ****)

There are a lot of reasons why it seems like television is beating film just from a conversational, what-people-are-talking-about standpoint, if not a financial one. One reason is Netflix. Although they are very reticent in giving us information about their ratings, particularly regarding their original programming, they’ve made it clear that streaming TV is their bread and butter, as opposed to streaming movies. It might simply be that TV is more fun to talk about. The amount of Mad Men and Breaking Bad conversations I’ve had with people over the last year far outnumber all of the film conversations I’ve had. I overhear people slobbering over the antics of The Big Bang Theory more than any comedic film that was released in 2013. I don’t want to talk shit on television – I am definitely one of the people that, over the last 5 years, have logged more hours watching TV and fewer hours watching movies – but could one of the reasons simply be the TV is “easier?” Maybe a better, less derogatory way to put that is that TV can do “easy” better. When I think of “easy” movies, I think of Adam Sandler, as opposed to the more difficult movies I watch, where I have to spend a lot of time thinking and putting things together. You can do a lot of work when you watch Breaking Bad, but you can also do no work and still think it’s the best show of all time. You can’t say that about Upstream Color or Holy Motors (both currently streaming on Netflix, as if you cared.)

HBO, which I still consider TV, despite what they tell me, is attempting to challenge that – with two half hour comedies, no less. With Eastbound and Down, a great but fairly “easy” comedy, ending its run, and Hello Ladies, a less “easy”, much less great, ending its first season, HBO has filled the holes with Getting On and Ja’mie: Private School Girl. One of my favorite hours of TV since September has become FOX’s Tuesday 9-10, with New Girl and Brooklyn 99. Super easy, and the laugh count is high. Despite being eligible for the same Emmys, HBO’s new hour doesn’t feel like that.

Getting On has the most magical phrase in television attached to it: based on a British show. It’s certainly not a phrase that guarantees quality, but it also doesn’t guarantee a level of difficulty. In fact, American producers work tirelessly to remove as much difficulty as possible from any pond jumper. Not no mo. Alex Borstein stars as a nurse in the old folks wing of a terrible hospital. Laurie Metcalf has just been “promoted” to be her boss, but doesn’t see it as a promotion. Getting On isn’t difficult in the way that things are unclear, or you have to do work. It’s difficult because it’s one of the least fun settings you can imagine, inhabited by two pathetic women, one extremely unlikable. It has its funny moments, but many of them are less laugh-out-loud funny, and more “I don’t know how realistic this is so I’m going to laugh instead of cry.” The first plot point revolves around a feces (it’s just “feces”) left on a chair in the lobby. You think “Yay! Poop jokes! That’ll save us.” And then the staff argues about what to do with it, with some people thinking that it should be disposed of, and the chair should be cleaned, and others thinking that it should be saved and examined. When a decision cannot be made, there is nothing to do but move the chair out of the way, cover it in police tape, and let the poopoo sit in the corner and rot. This is the same way the old patients are handled. The patients are treated like shit. Not the kind of poop humor I was looking forward to.

It’s one thing to point out the medical system is shot. It’s another thing to point out that the medical world, much like every other world, is filled with fallible people –  people who have absurd egos and agendas, and are scared poopless of getting looked over or not getting what they want. Second to all of this is the care of their patients. Borstein’s character gets some of my sympathy, but Metcalf’s? Holy moly. Imagine if Aunt Jackie lost that self-aware, deprecating outlook on life, and instead was a total cunt. She’s never smiled for realsies, and she’s never said anything without smiling for fakesies. It’s all very hard to watch. But it’s been a long time since I saw a pilot deliver its pitch so clearly, and also be compelling enough to watch the second episode. Part of me really wants to continue watching, and part of me would just feel bad if I didn’t continue watching, but also somehow justified being totally caught-up on Awkward. I think this a, if not THE, path for successful networks from here on out: let’s use some of our Game of Thrones money (or Walking Dead money, or Sons of Anarchy money, or our Big Bang Th…actually, that might be pushing it) to make stuff that’s certainly riskier, but also might be great in its own way. It has a better chance of sitting on my DVR than New Girl does, but that by no means means New Girl is better.

Here to save the day is cult-comedy hero and HBO mainstay Chris Lilley, of Summer Heights High and Angry Boys fame. To know of Lilley is to love him, with the only problem being that far too few people know who he is, despite HBO’s attempts to turn him into a star. In Ja’ime: Private School Girl, Lilley takes a member of his SHH ensemble and makes her the lead. Lilley becomes Ja’mie, a 17 year-old, female, private school student so completely it shoots past funny, becoming more of a character study than an outright parody. Lilley’s performance isn’t an impression of someone he knows. Impressions latch on to a couple of traits, like Christopher Walken’s weird, random pauses, and endlessly exploit them. He really does become this girl, giving her all of the peccadillos and speech patterns that any normal person would have. It’s very impressive, but when the novelty wears off, we’re left with a character who is simply awful to be around. There’s no sign of redemption, and you don’t want her to redeem herself anyway, because then people would be nice to her, and I don’t want that to happen. There are laughs; the scene where Ja’ime and her friends say goodbye to each other is a classic example of funny-not funny-hilarious. But without some sort of forward momentum, there’s too much to sit through here to recommend the show.

– Ryan Haley