The Gods of Dangerous Financial Instruments (#1.17)

Why Can't I Stop Watching House of Lies?!?!

House of Lies is a new series on Showtime.  It seems like it should be really good.  It has a great cast with Don Cheadle, Kristen Bell, and Ben Schwartz.  Even the guest stars looked good - Alan Dale, Richard Schiff, Andrea Savage, Greg Germann.  I was really looking forward to its premiere in January.  But then I watched it.  And I kept watching it.


You see, I don't like this show very much.  But for some unknown reason, I keep tuning in, week after week.  The actors, of course, are great.  However, the characters are not.  I'm all for unlikeable characters.  I'm all for douche-bags and jerks and bitches, as long as they serve a purpose.  As long as these characters have reasons for being assholes or have something more to them than their crass and selfish ways, I'm OK with it.  Kenny Powers has to be one of the most unlikeable people on the planet, but I still laugh with every episode of Eastbound & Down.  Really, I love when shows blur the lines between good guys and bad guys (which is done magnificently on Showtime's own Homeland).


On House of Lies, though, the four main characters - Marty (Cheadle), Jeannie (Bell), Clybe (Schwartz), and Doug (Josh Lawson) - are dreadful because they only have two dimensions.  The one note they play over and over is not only monotonous, but extremely unlikeable.  This quartet works for a management consulting firm.  What is that, you ask?  Well, that's most of the premise - not knowing what the hell these people actually do.  It basically surmounts to them systematically screwing clients over by doing very, very little work, dishing out a lot of B.S., and collecting their multi-million dollar fees.  And not in a funny way.

During this process, they are rude and crude with no regard for anyone but themselves.  They aren't even nice to each other.  And not in the teasing, I-mock-because-I-love-you sort of way.  In the most recent episode, Doug, the only vaguely almost kind of likeable one, attempts a conversation with Marty about being mentored by him.  Marty not only shuts him down, but is a complete sarcastic dick about it.


And Clyde, who rarely says anything that isn't a direct sexual reference, makes Barney Stinson look tame in the ways he will fool women into bed with him, and without any of Barney's redeeming qualities.  The team even has a "Hook-Up Points" game they play while traveling.  This could easily work, if it weren't so forced.  It's like the writers don't know how to tell a story without some strange or alarming sex situation.  These stories don't feel natural.  It's like they're purely there for shock value.

But I still continue to watch.


Every once in a while there is a ray of hope.  Jeannie suffers a panic attack while attempting to plan her wedding.  It might be the man or the commitment, but it's the first sign of emotion and humanity we see from her.  Marty finds himself in a similar situation when confronted with the memory of his mother's suicide.  It's a brief moment in a single episode, but it shows a little bit of what makes Marty tick.  Moments like these, though few and far between, show that this series and these characters are capable of more than the surface level douche-baggery.  I wish they'd explore these levels more, but as each episode passes (seven so far), I find myself continuously disappointed.


Maybe this is what the show is and maybe this is what I signed up for.  Shoot, maybe I like the shock value.  I really don't know.  But if things don't get better by the end of this season, I hope I have the willpower to step away.  My friends know I have a hard time quitting shows, no matter how they turn out.  But for now, I'll keep watching and waiting and hoping that things improve, hoping these characters are more than just a pretty face and a bad attitude.