UP N SMOKE
What's worse than a dumb stoner comedy? A dumb stoner comedy with a howling laugh track. And it's from
Chuck Lorre (“2
Broke Girls,” “Two and a Half Men”), master of all things crude and crass.
One suspects “Disjointed” is the comedy he's wanted to make his entire life — not because of the drug material, but because having it on a streaming service such as Netflix allows him to drop so many s-bombs and f-bombs.
Profanity is often the first resort of those with nothing to say.
Oscar and Emmy winner Kathy Bates (“Misery,” “American Horror Story”) stars as Ruth Whitefeather Feldman, the owner of a medicinal cannabis dispensary, Ruth's Alternative Caring.
She greets customers with, “How can I you?” That's a combination of the words heal and help. “I'm trying to make it a thing,” she says.
Ruth's biracial son Travis (Aaron Moten, “Mozart in the Jungle”) would like to put his MBA to use and get her to franchise the operation. He flirts often with “budtender” Olivia (Elizabeth Alderfer).
Pete (Dougie Baldwin, “Nowhere Boys”) works in the back, trying to grow the perfect blend of weed. “Oh, paranoia,” he says over a plant. “Why can't I breed you out?”
Jenny (Elizabeth Ho), the “toking Asian” as she says, worries she is failing her protective family by working in the pot shop.
New customer Maria (Nicole Sullivan, “MADtv”) is a stressedout mom. “I'm this close to driving the minivan into the lake,” she says.
Netflix made available four shows of the 20-episode order, but they weren't sequential episodes, odd given that much of the show is serialized. Carter (Tone Bell, “Truth Be Told”) is the gruff security guard with deep emotional issues. As the series starts, he's suffering from extreme PTSD from his combat tours in Iraq. As the series progresses, he becomes an avid pot smoker and learns to unwind, if not heal.
“There's a reason they call it cannabis and not `can't-abis,' ” Ruth says to him.
Perhaps in a nod to the perceived state of the viewer demographic, each episode features an aside, either animated or musical, illustrating the personality of a zoned-out character. The cartoons seem like things that might prompt a seizure in some. The musical numbers are among the most cringeworthy things aired anywhere this year. In one episode, Travis imagines himself as a blinged-out gangsta rapper and sings about white girls and weed.
The premiere was directed by legendary James Burrows (“Friends,” “Will & Grace”). Another episode was helmed by “Two and a Half Men” star Jon Cryer. One can only assume they, along with Bates, are getting hefty paychecks for their slumming.
Most of this show is stupid stoner humor.
“Your office has no walls, man,” one user says.
“But it does have a floor, and that's like a wall for your feet,” another marvels.
There aren't enough drugs to find the funny in “Disjointed.”