Sad Sacks (and Funny Guys): An Advance Review of Season Two of HBO's "The Life and Times of Tim"
Imagine a world where the very simplest of actions, the most basic of decisions, could produce a flood of absurd consequences. You'd likely be too terrified to even step outside of your box-sized Manhattan apartment but for Tim, the hero and titular character of HBO's animated comedy The Life and Times of Tim seems to have not heeded the lesson that if you stick your hand in the flames, you're likely to get burned.
Season Two of HBO's cheeky The Life and Times of Tim begins tonight and finds Tim (voiced by series creator Steve Dildarian) attempting to get out of a slew of bizarre circumstances that he has found himself in by dint of being, well, Tim.
Whether it's his possible replacement at the nebulous company Omnicorp by a homeless man named Vince (guest star Tony Hale), thanks to his efforts to grow a beard, or suffering through a terrible revival of a 1940s play ("it's like an Arthur Miller play... only slower") so that his friend Stu (Nick Kroll) can score from pot from his drug dealer-turned-actor. (Hint: don't use "tickets" as a codeword for pot to buy some from a wannabe actor.)
Throughout it all, Tim wanders through life being painfully average yet finding himself in some rather extraordinary and unusual situations (witness his attempts to prevent a jilted pharmaceutical saleswoman from driving them both of the George Washington Bridge in a stolen car in an upcoming episode). The results are hysterical yet painful, much like that of HBO's other animated comedy launching tonight, The Ricky Gervais Show, which the pay cabler is airing back-to-back in a one-hour block of they-didn't-just-say-that-did-they? comic mirth.
All in all, The Life and Times of Tim will make you laugh... and make you thankful that your life isn't quite as bad as poor Tim's. At the very least, your job isn't in danger of being taken over by a manipulative homeless man. Or, perhaps, maybe it is...
Season Two of The Life and Times of Tim begins tonight at 9:30 pm ET/PT on HBO.