While the anthology series has been around as long as television itself, the recent Emmy successes of American Horror Story, True Detective, and Fargo prove the format is exceptionally trendy right now. And to underscore that fact, IFC has unnecessarily turned one of its comic oddities, the Funny or Die-produced The Spoils of Babylon, into an anthology. Airing in summer 2015, The Spoils Before Dying will reportedly evoke the 1950s jazz scene in an erotically charged detective story. It can only be an improvement.
Receiving two Emmy nominations last week, Babylon is the textbook definition of an acquired taste, probably only truly funny to those with an encyclopedic knowledge of the 70s and 80s-era miniseries it spoofs – War and Remembrance; The Winds of War; Rich Man, Poor Man; The Thorn Birds and so on. This is the kind of television event that lovingly crafts picturesque scenes of natural splendor – actors monologuing against vast mountain ranges or proclaiming love against an impossibly beautiful setting sun – but juxtaposes those scenes against cityscapes populated with cardboard skyscrapers and matchbox car traffic. Hell, one of the characters is played by a department store mannequin who speaks in voice overs, has sex with Tobey Maguire, cries real tears, gives birth to an American Girl knock-off, and melts in a fire.
As it is, the central plot revolves around the tragic Morehouse family – patriarch Jonas (Tm Robbins), daughter Cynthia (Kristen Wiig), and adopted son Devon (Tobey Maguire). The characters stomp gleefully through decades of clichés from striking oil to World War II to the drug-fueled Beat era and beyond. Cynthia and Devon melodramatically attract and repulse each other through the entire miniseries, proclaiming their love and walking away from each other at least six times an episode.
It’s all very intentional and deliberately overwrought. The trouble is it’s not very funny. Sure, I laughed out loud several times during the first two episodes, but it quickly becomes too obvious and too familiar a few episodes in. Six episodes long, it has the feeling of the sketch on Saturday Night Live that will never end. There are pleasures here and there, though, particularly in the occasionally chuckle-worthy dialogue such as “Time was measured in work, and also on clocks and watches. But mostly work.”
Seemingly having much more fun than viewers, Babylon’s cast is deliberately eccentric. Joining Robbins, Wiig, and Maguire are Jessica Alba, Val Kilmer, Haley Joel Osment, Michael Sheen, and Will Ferrell who all seem to be pitching their comedy to the cheap seats in the back. Shockingly, Kristen Wiig received an Emmy nomination last week for Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie. While she is wholly committed to the project, I suspect the nominating committee must have only watched a single episode (as I did months ago before finally catching up on the entire endeavor this weekend) if the name alone did not garner the nomination. After three hours of canned ham, even Wiig grates on your nerves despite flashes of inspired comic acting and makes you beg for the conclusion. Or a loaded gun.
That said, Wiig comes off as positively Streepian in her skill compared to the woefully miscast Tobey Maguire who commits a cardinal sin in material of this type – he shows he’s in on the joke. Nearly laughing in a few scenes, Maguire demonstrates a total lack of comic skill and overly relies on the “deliberately bad acting” trope for humor. Fairing better are the better actors who are used in smaller doses: Robbins, Sheen, and Ferrell.
As anticipated, Ferrell evokes most of the laughs as he channels the late-in-life bloated persona of Orson Welles to portray Eric Jonrosh, the fictional author of the novel on which the miniseries is based. He bloviates and drunkenly pontificates on the filming of the miniseries with such gems as “Hollywood: where dreams come true. Unless you dare to dream something bold and original.” Thankfully, this character is the only aspect of the original series that will translate to the next outing, The Spoils Before Dying.
Until then, you can follow the author @ericjonrosh on Twitter for future developments and catch up on The Spoils of Babylon on Amazon Prime or on IFC.com.
