TV Watch: "Maron" -- So why not watch? I mean, it couldn't hurt you, could it?

"There's no such thing as a career in comedy," Marc informs his mother (Sally Kellerman), who has mastered the technique of talking to her son without actually listening, in Episode 2 of Maron, "Dead Possum." No, this isn't an actual embedded clip, but you can view the clip here. I'm sorry I couldn't embed the clip for you, but when I did, I lost all my paragraphing in the whole post. (I'd like to see some manager or software nitwit at our bloghost killed for this. If nothing else, it would teach him/her -- though I'm guessing it's a him -- a lesson. But does anybody care what I'd like to see?)

by Ken

As longtime readers know, back in the days of Air America Radio (does anyone remember Air America Radio?), I had a pretty intense involvement with comic Marc Maron as cohost and comedic driving force of the network's brilliant morning show, Morning Sedition. AAR was such a miasma of managerial arrogance and incompetence that it's easy to forget that it put some pretty decent programs on the air, in particular that dazzling morning show, which was hilarious as well as politically dead on target. And despite the truly stupefying ineptitude of the people who ran the network -- who surely deserved to be executed, several times if possible -- the show was building a fan base most everywhere it was heard, despite the best lack-of-effort of said managerial nincompoops.

The nincompoops, being too stupid and broadcast-illiterate to have any glimmering of the caliber of property they had under their roof, did their best to dilute it and make it a conventionally dimwitted morning radio show. And then they did the only even stupider thing they could think of to do: They canceled the show. These were people so ignorant, they had no clue how hard it is to develop such a property. Since that was the point at which it would have needed overseers who knew how to nurture it and make it grow, naturally the cause was hopeless. The only thing the lowlifes knew, apart from stealing the money they were paid for their stunning incompetence, was how to destroy what could have been a cornerstone of their franchise. All they had to do was pull the plug, and that was one thing they knew how to do.

The show's demise left a lot of us fans angry and bereft. In the years since, I've seen Marc Maron's name a number of times involved in projects of one sort or another, and when I was able to sample them, they seemed to me okay but nothing I needed to involve myself with.

Now IFC is giving us a half-hour show called Maron Fridays at 10pm -- and, judging from a quick search on my online cable guide, pretty much any other time of the week you'd care to watch. If you check your listings, you can probably still catch both episodes that have aired so far, "Internet Troll" (with guest Dave Foley; no, he's not the Internet troll) and "Dead Possum" (with guest Denis Leary, who's also a producer of the show). You can also watch full episodes online.

The premise is this Marc Maron character in the show is a fellow in mid-life who pursued a career in comedy which didn't quite turn out the way he had hoped; ditto for both of his marriages. He found himself not only single once again but reduced to doing a podcast in his garage in the L.A. area, which caught on and began attracting celebrity guests. As Marc himself explains in any media forum to which he can cadge access (including on-cable behind-the-scenes features), the TV character is pretty much himself, the major difference being that on the show he's acting.

He also notes that the casting of Judd Hirsch as his father (that comes up in Episode 3, next week) gives him a better father than he has in real life, something he assures us he has reported to his real-life father, who was apparently a little jumpy about the show. It seems unlikely that that made Dad less jumpy.

In Episode 1, Marc was freaked out to find out that he had that Internet troll, whom he tracked down with the sidekickish assistance of podguest Dave Foley. In Episode 2, podguest Denis Leary enabled him to track down the source of the mysterious stench he had noticed in his house: a dead possum in the crawl space under the house. (The concept of a crawl space, it turned out, was new to Marc.) I've found both episodes entertaining enough to continue watching, though I have to say the neurotic-self-loathing-comic thing seems awfully famjiliar, from maybe about a zillion sources, a number of which struck me as funnier. Still, the show is pleasant enough. I do have to wonder, though, if "pleasant" is where a show like this really wants to be going.

As I thought back to my one incandescent Marc Maron experience, Morning Sedition, it occurred to me that however personal Marc may have allowed himself to get on MS, the show was never about him, and he was almost always hilarious, with all that neurosis being released so dazzingly into the political cosmos. I can see where he might think that the one thing he has left which is uniquely his is his own life. However, I'm thinking that perhaps the last thing he might want to be doing is a show that is entirely about himself. Hey, it's just a thought.

#