High points of ‘Disjointed’ are when it experiments
Say this for Disjointed: The marijuana-dispensary comedy may take a little while, but pieces of it eventually kick in. Structurally, the kind-of-aworkplace — they’re stoned! — sitcom ( eegE out of four, Netflix, available Friday), lives up to its title. The format is as traditional as TV gets, a studio-audience situation comedy from genre master Chuck Lorre ( The Big Bang Theory, Mom), but it gets more intriguing when it experiments, taking off on tangents that seem inspired by a higher consciousness.
Tie-dyed Earth mother Ruth (Oscar winner Kathy Bates) is the proprietor of Ruth’s Alternative Caring, a Los Angeles-area cannabis shop whose staff includes three retail “budtenders” (Dougie Baldwin, Elizabeth Ho and Elizabeth Alderfer), security guard Carter (Tone Bell) and Ruth’s son, Travis (Aaron Moten), an MBA with business ideas a bit too ambitious for his laid-back, oftenstoned mom.
As a topic, marijuana is no longer that cutting-edge, as weed is more accepted and even legal in some states, including California as of 2018, although Attorney General Jeff Sessions talks about stepping up federal enforcement.
And other shows, including HBO’s High Maintenance and MTV’s Mary + Jane, have beaten Disjointed to the latest twist in stoner humor, retail pot sales.
The 20 episode-series has some good dazed-and-confused lines — Travis to Ruth: “Can we talk or are you too high?” Ruth: “Just business-high” — but much of the Bong Show humor, including a way-too-long riff where budtender Pete (Baldwin) talks to his plants, was funnier in performances by George Carlin’s Hippy Dippy Weatherman, Jeff Spicoli of Fast Times at Ridgemont High or the guys from Pineapple Express. (Pick your generation or try a smooth blend.)
The main characters at first seem a bit stock — hippie mom, uptight son, loopy salespeople — but they get a little better over time. (Four non-sequential epi- sodes were made available for review.) Lorre, producing here with former Daily Show head writer David Javerbaum, has a gift for finding the sweet spot as a show progresses, but it remains to be seen how his process will be affected when a season of episodes is made available all at once rather than on a weekly basis, a process that allows for reassessment and audience feedback.
Experimentation is the part of Disjointed that is the most fun to watch, even if everything doesn’t always connect.
First, it takes a chance by veering into a serious topic, the PTSD and depression of Afghanistan military vet Carter (a standout performance by Bell). The transitions from laughs to a sensitive issue can be jarring, but the development of the Carter-Ruth relationship is satisfying and the stream-of-consciousness animation that illustrates Carter’s thought process is a visual treat.
Disjointed also features fittingly distracting interstitials, from fake marijuana-oriented commercials (instead of State Farm, Pot Farmers provides a tornado-ravaged couple with emergency joints and bongs) to Facebook Live sessions with Disjointed’s own Cheech and Chong, the amusing-to-annoying Dank (Chris Redd) and Dabby (Betsy Sodaro), to brief visual puns (a person rolling sushi, a woman rolling a tire).
Even the weirder, not-so-funny interjections make it seem like somebody’s trying. And, perhaps they all make more sense from a heightened state.