The Life and Times of Tim: Episode 10
We’re a day late and a dollar short with this, but it is tough to argue that the season finale of this series deserves much more. Maybe it was our short attention span, maybe it was the series itself, but for whatever reason we quickly lost interest in The Life and Times of Tim. The effort was there for the first half of the season, and maybe Steve Dildarian, given that he comes from advertising, would assume that based on the strength of the first five episodes that we wouldn’t notice the relative weakness of the second five. Well, he was wrong.
For those who have never seen the show, this is pretty much the cast of characters.
The first half, “Theo Strikes Back” was set up perfectly. A needlessly pissed off coworker playing an over the top prank on Tim that spiraled out of control, but it felt like it ended right before the punchline, with Tim standing in his bosses living room sporting his pants around his ankles waiting to fuck his wife. It’s not like I wanted to see this in explicit detail, but I did want to see Tim’s boss jump in and catch them in the act. You know, “Right when it started to get really dirty”.
The second half, “Amy Gets Wasted”, felt like a failed effort from the beginning. Amy’s drunken description of Stu was comical, but beyond that the entire bar scene fell kind of flat. This episode was rife with good comedic bits: Tim’s exacting revenge, Stu showing Tim the pictures from the bachelorette party, Tim propositioning Amy’s sister and the biker. But much like “Theo Strikes Back”, it felt like it ended in the middle of the arc.
All of these tend to end abruptly (after all, each segment is roughly 12-13 minutes long), but for the twenty they’ve shown, about fifteen have demonstrated some finality. Like, a point in the story that feels like a logical conclusion, not just a random spot where they run out of material. Maybe with “Amy Gets Wasted”, if they’re planning a second season that was supposed to be some sort of cliffhanger. But that isn’t why we watch this series, that isn’t really how the series has been designed, and even if they are planning a second season they have about a 2,000/1 shot of getting it. I’ve never seen an HBO series generate so little buzz. Fucking K Street was more notarized than this.
With all this said, we’d give a second season a chance, but if it continued down this same path of implausibility and staggering predictability we’ll jump ship after two or three episodes. It’s amazing that at one point we were reacting to the series like this, and now we’re here. Pretty much indifferent to its conclusion. We’ll keep you posted if we hear anything about a second season. But outside of HBO promos, we’ve barely heard anything about a first, so I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Maybe some links later.
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:23 pm
come on! i loved the last one… the accident scene, i really laughed hard on that one
anyway I loved reading your TLATOT reviews, so thanks!
January 12th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
[...] generated no buzz, no critical acclaim, no ratings and no awards. Other than an extremely funny first half of their pilot season, the series has virtually no qualities that a network would consider redeeming. I guess it tells us [...]
May 2nd, 2009 at 5:17 pm
this shows the best I know so many people who are waiting for the second season its not advertised theres no clips between shows nobody knows its there.You need to market it this can be bigger than southpark if you market it.I just was flipping through and found it everyone i told loves it now.
January 24th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
GR8 Info, what are other good sites to confirm this info?
February 24th, 2010 at 12:32 am
Those of you leaving negative comments about the comedy in “The Life & Times of Tim” all need to evaluate your personal comedic values and/or non-existent sense of humor. Leaving posts complaining that it lacks a plot or that the second half of the season was drastically different or worse than the first half is completely absurd and you obviously do not understand the concept of dry humor. More than likely you are not successful in any type of facet of the entertainment industry and I would pay a large amount of money to challenge any of you to write a wittier, funnier animated show. What was Seinfeld’s plot again? Oh wait, numerous shows are based on funny unrealistic situations that could more than likely never possibly happen. The fact is “The Life and Times of Tim” is extremely funny and the younger adult to middle aged adult audience is extremely entertained by the basic innocent vulgarity of many of the episodes. When any of you negative mentally retarded tools write a better script for an animated show that you can successfully sell to HBO, shoot me a message and I’ll easily financially back it so you don’t have to flip hamburgers anymore.