Big Time In Hollywood, FL: “Separate but Equal”

Sociopathic behavior makes for great comedy, doesn’t it? That’s what we’ve learned from TV shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Fawlty Towers and films like Aaltra. We love to watch people with no moral compass and a tendency towards selfish and sometimes violent behavior because they are doing and saying the things we can’t.
I wasn’t entirely convinced that Jack, Alex Anfanger’s character on Big Time was following in that tradition until tonight’s episode. Here’s a guy with a single-minded desire to become a famous director and anyone who isn’t on board is either tossed aside or violently attacked. Del falls in love with a lovely lady? Doesn’t matter; he wasn’t there to help film Jack’s next great epic so he’s out of the picture. And when Ben calls him “a lousy worthless hack” over Thanksgiving dinner, that’s when the plates start flying and literal knives come out. Jack is a goldmine of delusion and fury of a sort that hasn’t been seen in a comedy series in some time.
All of this behavior comes pouring out of Jack due to the fallout from losing, well, everyone on his production crew. Ben is off to try to be a grownup, with a job and an apartment. Del is wrapped up in his relationship. And his other assistant, a pre-teen named Petey, practically begs Jack to forget his dream and “wake up.” That may lead the wannabe filmmaker to a job blurring out the faces in a dude’s toilet cam videos, but he finds another vein of disgust and anger…once he sees his brother’s face in one of the clips, scrubbing a toilet at a local porn movie house.