I've been meaning to talk about Showtime's new show, Episodes, but I wanted to wait until I got a better sense of the show as a whole. In the interim I watched a show starring David Cross that premiered on IFC in October, The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Todd Margaret, and realized that the two shows raise some really interesting comparisons. So, here we go, two shows at once!
Episodes is about a married British writing team who come to LA to help produce an American adaptation of their BAFTA-winning show, Lyman's Boys. The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Todd Margaret (hereafter known as TIPDOTM or simply Todd Margaret) is about an unqualified temp who gets sent to England to sell a toxic energy drink called Thunder Muscle when his company gets taken over by Brent Wilts (Will Arnett), the loudest, angriest, douchiest guy you're ever going to meet. Both shows find humor in these classic fish-out-of-water scenarios, where expectations and long-held stereotypes are tromped on all over the place. However, even just three episodes in, I can tell that Episodes is already much funnier and much better put-together than TIPDOTM has any hopes of being.
