Togetherness
“Family Day”/“Handcuffs”/“Insanity”
(HBO)
B+/B+/A
Togetherness had a couple things going for it right off the bat: A) It’s an HBO production, a network that has proven to chug out solid, often spectacular, series on a regular basis. And B) It comes from the minds of Jay and Mark Duplass, the brothers who brought you quirky (and underrated) indie comedies Cyrus and Jeff Who Lives at Home. For their latest off-the-beaten path quasi-drama, the duo teamed with childhood friend Steve Zissis, who cowrote all eight episodes with the Duplasses, for what is, to this point, their most profoundly earnest creation to date.
The series follows Brett (played by Mark Duplass) and Michelle (Melanie Lynskey), a 40-something couple with two young kids careening their way through the post-post-honeymoon phase of their marriage. To further complicate matters, Brett and Michelle have two couch-surfing cohorts in tow: Brett’s childhood friend Alex (Zissis), an overweight, balding (and struggling) actor who is evicted from his apartment in the first episode, and Tina (Amanda Peet), Michelle’s unstable, guy-crazy sister who technically-but-not-really lives in Houston. Aside from their place of residence, though, the foursome share a more crucial common denominator: None of them have this whole life thing figured out yet.
In the first three half-hour episodes, each individual’s moral and relational compasses are put to trial. In the pilot, for instance, Brett and Michelle catch each other, um, pleasing themselves as they find their marriage’s intimacy quite literally slipping through their fingers. (And in the episode’s most affecting moment, Brett asks his wife why she won’t have sex with him anymore, to which she replies, “I don’t know.”) Meanwhile, the polar-opposite Alex and Tina, at first glimpse averse to one another, come to understand and empathize with each other as they realize that they’re in this thing together.
Zissis’ and the Duplasses’ script captures that elusive but ever-present midlife essence — the notion that, no matter your age or the shell you wear in public, we are all constantly seeking identity and place — and the way in which they convey this truth is nothing short of shrewd. This may seem like heavy subject matter — and it is — yet the tone is far from it. Togetherness is a comedy at its core, a really funny show that just happens to have some keen observations about life. Zissis’ expressive, off-kilter brand of comedy is particularly on point (which isn’t surprising, given his brief but potent output in TV’s Arrested Development and Parks and Recreation, as well as the aforementioned Duplass films), but the abilities of all four of the cast’s core members are ideal for their respective roles.
A show like this couldn’t succeed without a certain chemistry between the parties involved. Zissis and the Duplass brothers have it. There’s a scene at the end of “Insanity,” the third and episode, that demonstrates this masterfully: After a moment of clear devastation for Alex, Brett pulls over his car and the two engage in a synchronized, all-out air-drum assault (to Rush’s “Tom Sawyer,” no less). It was a moment of spiritual clarity for the two longtime friends, one that felt like something they had rehearsed and engaged in for decades. That shared moment of fleeting, dazed euphoria is the precise emotional aerospace Togetherness inhabits: a temporary, yet wholly necessary, escape from isolation and uncertainty.
