Martin Carr reviews the fourth episode of Kidding…
There is a depth of exploration and intellectual curiosity which frames Showtime’s Kidding which underpins, asks questions and challenges what audiences should expect from their dramatic television. Manipulation of identity for personal and corporate gain exist alongside heartfelt deviations into notions of gender identity, sexual attraction and issues of religion. What is laid over the top of these themes, notions, ideas and concepts serves to distract but entertain.
Similar in part to Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy or The Simpsons, Jeff Pickles and his innocent brand of televisual learning are more than mere leading man sleight of hand. Carrey, Keener, Langella and Greer are all in on the joke which hides in plain sight. Pitching an audience heart breaking family drama and off kilter moments of existential humour alongside debates on our reincarnation as cucumbers is brave. Thankfully working in conjunction with these genuinely effective meltdown moments of family greed, corporate double dealing and image manipulation come instants of pitch black tenderness.
Carrey can come across as childlike, psychotic, inquisitive yet affable all within a single scene yet never loses his audience. In terms of range it could be suggested that Kidding truly tests him like only Man On The Moon and The Truman Show had done previously. Jeff Pickles is revealing his complexity slowly yet Carrey does so while maintaining a semblance of normality. Moments of deviation which challenge our perception would include carnal knowledge of a younger female cancer patient in silhouette, unbalanced inquisition of a stoner or surveillance of an ex-wife from the adjacent house.
This ramped up sense of reality in which damaged people continue ignoring problems, lose their sense of self and only find peace fleetingly aligns with the haphazard notion of everyday life for many. These scenarios are obviously exaggerated but the themes, problems and factors which Kidding decides to explore are all too real. Grief, bereavement, infidelity and sacrifice of the individual for corporate advancement are not uncommon events. Some could read more into this jumbled mess of Americana as being a direct reflection on the country as overseen by potentiates more concerned with wealth than individual prosperity. Someone who openly mocks, conceitedly props up the unworthy and stares down from an ivory tower of isolation on a stricken populous.
If the showrunners had hoped to garner just such a reaction through their blatantly black humour, existential angst and deconstructive approach then they have achieved it. Anyone else who wants entertainment without an underlying concern for the world can I recommend Love Island or Fanny by Gaslighting, which is pretty much the same thing.
Martin Carr
Originally published October 4, 2018. Updated January 8, 2019.
