I was ten minutes into Big Time in Hollywood, FL’s first episode and I thought I knew the score. The story of two man-children brothers just barely on either size of 30 making incompetent films while living with their parents bore the hallmarks of various other basic cable comedies. Mix up the destructive self-obsession of the Always Sunny gang, the frat-slacker charisma of Workaholics and the film genre parodies of any number of comedy shows, and you’d have Comedy Central’s latest original program. It was funny, but it felt too familiar. And then the pilot ended with a genuinely shocking moment that was clearly going to have an impact on the rest of the series. It earned my repeat business, and immediately: I pulled up the screener of the second episode as soon as the first one ended.
“We like the idea of consequences,” says Dan Schimpf, who created the show along with Alex Anfanger, who also plays one of the show’s leads. “You start expecting one thing from the show and the expectations start to shift as it keeps going. You realize there are actual consequences for these insane actions that [the show’s characters are] making.”
Unlike most of the shows that it’ll get compared to, Big Time is serialized. It doesn’t hit the reset button at the end of every half-hour. Episodes expect you to remember what happened last week. It’s not a groundbreaking decision by any means, but that approach immediately distinguishes the show from most of the basic cable comedy pack. It lends it a cinematic air, similar to Eastbound & Down or the longer storylines on Louie. It gives the show a power beyond the quality of its jokes or performances.
“[The serialized structure] is just something that Alex and I were both attracted to,” Schimpf continues. “The show goes into dark territory because these characters who are sort of carefree and sort of on top of the world, living at their parents’ house, have to deal with very insane, heavy doses of reality as it goes on.”
That shifting, often dark tone should be familiar to fans of Schimpf and Anfanger’s previous show, the cult YouTube hit Next Time on Lonny. The two friends, who met at NYU, made two seasons of the bite-sized online show, the second season under the banner of Ben Stiller’s production company Red Hour. After wrapping that season the duo got the chance to pitch traditional TV ideas to Red Hour. The resulting show landed at Comedy Central, with Stiller playing a pivotal role in the pilot.
“[Stiller]’s just been extremely supportive of us,” Schimpf explains. “I think we share a lot of sensibilities comedically, playing around with genre tones.”
“He really liked Lonny and wanted to produce that with us, and he gave me this small part in Walter Mitty,” Anfanger continues. “And then when he said he would play Jimmy Statts [in the Big Time pilot] it was just the greatest moment of our lives.”
Stiller’s company shepherded Schimpf and Anfanger to television, but the jump from making a short series for YouTube to doing a traditional half-hour series for a real network was a huge undertaking for the two. “For the YouTube game, at least our experience, you have to strip it down to as few people as possible,” Schimpf explains. “You’re trying to do everything, trying to be very ambitious with like four or five people trying to pull a lot together, and everybody’s working like nine different positions, and that’s a game and a challenge in itself. [With Big Time’s] bigger set, union television, big production experience, it offers some solutions that plague you with the YouTube strategy, and then presents new problems that you’re not necessarily used to. Primarily being how much everything costs to do. You’re on such an aggressive schedule and you just have to deal with those problems that on a smaller scale you have multiple solutions to. When you’re not paying as much for things you have more time to do things.