Hulu's Difficult People: Why Didn't It Last?

Doesn't look very funny.

It wasn’t.

Comedy died the day Robin Williams died, IMO. It's like everybody's afraid to laugh even when it's funny for fear of hurting someone's feelings over trivialities.

R3 This series was a constant stream of dark humor and personal insults. They killed Nathan Lane, got sued by Lin-Manuel Miranda, stole a tranny's GHB, and made a jillion Kevin Spacey jokes before his outing.

Cole Escola was good in it.

R5 I thought he was a weak spot on the cast. Also the trans actress in the restaurant always shrieking about 9/11. They were both entirely one-note characters.

Billy Eichner can be reasonably funny when he's not yelling at a camera like a ghoul.

[quote]Comedy died the day Robin Williams died, IMO

Perhaps the saddest post on DL in ages, in its reflection upon the poster.

I actually enjoyed this...Bummed out when they cancelled it. Matthew was hilarious = a 20 year old twink with an 80 year old boyfriend...LINK....Hilarious!!

I enjoyed it, especially the little digs at celebrities with issues that weren't generally known to the public.

It wasn't a perfect show, but it consistently made me laugh.

Loved it and miss it. A nice follow up for those who feel the same, and on Hulu also, is the two seasons show Alone Together, which is like a 20 something West Coast version of it with two reprehensible leads and their constant in-jokes and chatter, oblivious to the rest of the world who they find awful.

It was sloppy and stupid. There were fundamental problems, for example the Julie chick, too stupid to live, was just wrong in too many ways (yet the actress wrote the series); and the cast whole cast of characters at the café was overkill and deadly unfunny. But it had moments where I loved it. Unfortunately those moments were not in every episode.

The Season 2 premiere episode "Unplugged" with John Mulaney as an "Old-Timey" is my favorite.

R12 = The Nazi Old Timey....I did not enjoy the Joel McHale episode though....The "Gay" Seth Myers episode was good.

eichner has a face for radio

It was good but uneven for its first two seasons (eps 1-20) but the third and final season is some of the funniest, darkest, sharpest, most consistent comedy I've ever seen on TV—as good as Veep or Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, you can take that long to get going on network but not on streaming. I read that Hulu believes in research showing there's no financial advantage in renewing shows beyond their third season. (Unless it's a blockbuster like The Handmaid's Tale, and tbh, I haven't watched that show since its second season).

it as garbage and ran three seasons too long.

Loved it, just found it this past year. The two leads and Andrea Martin were often screamingly funny. It seems like Hulu pulled the plug in Season 3. The final two episodes looked slapped together. Or maybe they pissed off the wrong celeb?

Shrill.

Loved it.

I love it. Some episodes were brilliant. Wish they didn’t cancel it

The Italian Piñata episode was especially funny. Julie’s boyfriend that worked at PBS and the shenanigans around thar.

The best performers on the show were Andrea Martin as Julie's mother and Jackie Hoffman as Billy's sister-in-law. Julie's line readings were terrible and her Niles Crane-like boyfriend wasn't interesting, likewise the whole cafe setting,

I watched it (it was moderately entertaining at times), often pondering why Sidibe Gabourey was in it.

I loved gay Seth Meyers.

It was a lot of fun at times. It was dark. It poked fun at everyone. It had some really great moments, like Billy hooking up with John Mulaney in a steam room then finding out he's an "old timey" gay hipster and then later a Nazi memorabilia collector.

[quote]I watched it (it was moderately entertaining at times), often pondering why Sidibe Gabourey was in it.

Because her character hated Billy. That was her purpose and Billy's character couldn't do a damn thing about it because she was his boss. When she was promoted to a regular on Empire, Fox made her leave the show. She ended up guesting every now and then after that since they'd only let her do 3 episodes of another series not competing with their own.

The Patches episode should be shown to film students as an example of excellent writing and what a performer can do when given space.

Julie decides to try doing an Australian accent to a book a role. She books it. When she goes to perform it, it turns out that her accent is so bad that the cast and crew only hired her because they thought she was mentally challenged.

As a few have said it was uneven at best. The Patches episode was probably the best. It had a nice run. There was no reason for it to continue.

I loved this show during its run and was sad to see it go but understood that it was time to move on. What was disappointing in the year or two that followed was seeing Billy get all of these big Hollywood jobs while Julie was still doing a midnight show on Tuesday at some random place in the Village.

The big standouts for me were the side characters, as well as Andrea Martin, Jackie Hoffman, and the wonderful Stockard Channing as Andrea's bitch sister.

R26, I think it's pretty obvious Billy/Julie had a falling out. It's just sad. He long left her in the dust. He's still complimentary towards her. At the time the show ended she seemed to have projects "in development" with other networks that never got off the ground. I also heard, way back then, that he was the one that wanted to move on or at least wanted to be accommodated so he could do other things. I'm happy that things worked out well for him but it says a lot he hasn't reached back and given Julie a bit of help climbing up that mountain.

R26 R27

Right around the time of the cancellation, Julie did a lot of press where she basically said it was okay with the main cast to move on. She wasn't bitter or bitchy, but actually kind of relieved. She said it was getting harder and harder for any of them to be in New York at the same time (which is why so much of Season 3 was individual scenes with only one of them), and especially hard to get Andrea Martin anymore. Really, looking back at Season 3, it makes sense. James Urbaniak was hardly around (Arthur was said to be in Florida), and most of Billy's scenes were either with his new boyfriend or with one-off guest stars rather than with Julie. And Gabby S. was never around to play Billy's boss anymore.

This also happened to Arrested Development when they brought it back. They tried to play it off as "each character gets an episode/arc," but it was really just because everyone was too busy to get together for two months of filming.

Search Party, which landed on HBOMax is also another great series as a follow up to this one, all of them despicable 20 something New Yorker characters always doing the wrong thing unapologetically.

I wanted to like Search Party so much but the first couple of episodes just grated. I know that its whole premise is that it's an uncomfortable show but does it get funnier?

Love this show. Watched the whole series twice. The dynamic between Julie and Arthur was never funny tho.

Billy has definitely skyrocketed to fame with his upcoming turn as "Matt Drudge" in Ryan Murphy's Bill & Monica drama!

R11 thank you for the rec on alone together. Loving it. Had never heard of it

r32 No need to shit on Billy's career. He has a few movies in development that he is writing and will be starring in. And due to our new media ecosphere, they'll probably get made because he's a funny high profile gay comedian and they're for Netflix and Amazon. He doesn't need to fuck with selling tickets until he's ready, if he ever will be.

Why does Cole Escola have a career, but Jeffery Self (his old YouTube pally) does not?

"Patches" was the best episode and could hold its own with the most misanthropically hilarious episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

Andrea Martin often gets parts that aren't worthy of her but she was wonderful in this.

And I loved Julie's nemesis, the nasty girl in the wheelchair.

It was the best show ever

I tried to watch it but, man, so shrill.

Jackie Hoffman was classic as a vicious old Jew Broad. She was herself, dialed up to an 11.

And her little verbal tiff with Andrea Martin was gold. Two menopausal Hebrew ladies trying to out "Excuse Meeee!" each other in a restaurant.

well OP from that trailer it's a miracle it had 3 seasons

What is so bizarre is that Julie is charismatic and watchable and Billy is an energy drain.

But he gets the career?

[quote]What is so bizarre is that Julie is charismatic and watchable and Billy is an energy drain.

R41: For me it's rather the opposite, Julie, whom I might have expected to like as creator/writer (whatever her exact role) was the energy drain; a bell that never rang right every time she was on screen. And Billy, of whom I was vaguely aware for the super obnoxious man-on-the-street interviews, was oddly the likable one because he was able to suggest some depth beneath the gay idiot veneer.

I tried watching a couple random episodes, on airplanes, switching channels, before I finally found one that I didn't hate. Great that each episode was its own thing, but it also contributed to the unevenness of the series.

Because whores ruin everything?

Julie's line readings were terrible and her physicality as a performer is incredibly awkward, which explains why the "Patches" episode worked so well. Billy's adventures as a gay man in NYC--regrettable hook-ups with guys at the gym, joining that clique of A-list gays (the TenTens) that did nothing but throw orgies--were funnier and more interesting. I'm not sure the premise of the show lent itself to a several-season run. I also get the sense Julie Klausner is just as lazy in real life as her alter ego, so the occasional podcast is probably more her speed. Billy was clearly much more ambitious than Julie, so he wasn't going to hang around forever

[quote]I'm not sure the premise of the show lent itself to a several-season run.

Agreed, R44. Some things are better short and sweet, and almost nowhere is that more than case than in TV series. I would rather see Eichner get a deal to do three different series that might run for a season or tow or three than keep renewing one series that had great moments but wasn't great overall. There are exceptions but three seasons with relatively few episodes is about right. "Dark," one of the best things on TV in ages was 3 seasons.

I like the British model where a series season has few episodes and never knows if it will be renewed until after everything's been shut down and everyone sent home to work on other things. Each season has a freshness and an arc and its own tone; each stands alone.

The best episodes were Patches and the one where Julie was cancelled for acting in a Woody Allen film.

Yeah, I loved Julie when she wrote for Gawker and applaud her for writing the show but she lacks presence.

Julie is busier as a writer (wrote some stuff for Apple TV+'s Schmiggadoon) than as an actress.

I loved it all, the only thing I would have wanted was a little more physical comedy in the vein of Lucy and Ethel and Laverne and Shirley.

The Woody Allen episode was flawless. He's such a weird, gross old man. They didn't show him, but made an entire episode out of his shitty writing, his nonsense process, and his enduring power over the industry.

I always wondered how they got away with the Woody Allen and Kevin Spacey jokes. Couldn't they have been sued for defamation or similar?

Woody Allen and Kevin Spacey are public figures and the show did not say anything that was not said elsewhere. So it would be hard to prove any damages.

They should have made the basset hounds the focus of the series. Would never have been cancelled, would have won every award possible, etc etc.

I love it I'm on season 2 and I never want it to end.

Season 1 of The Other Two covered a lot of the same ground, but with better acting and more engaging characters. Absolutely delightful.

Then Season 2 became like Difficult People without the humor. Horrendous.

R36 I loved that bitch in the wheelchair!

I finished it last night and I howled a few times. They took down a lot of sacred cows. A lot.

Julie and Billy riffing on The Other Two (which I also love) would be a meta-delight.

“My favorite part was how they took our show and just re-made it with blonde gentiles from Ohio who are ten years younger than us!”

“I agree, Billy. An occasional pop-in by Richard Kind is the absolute maximum when it comes to the right amount of New York Jewiness for a show about aspiring show biz types in New York. Kudos on not over-egging the Kugel, the Other Two!”

I really like Julie. What's she up to these days? And I thought she was really pretty. I hope she doesn't do too much botox because her expressions absolutely kill me

So agree, R55, the second season of TO2 was abysmal. Molly Shannon was barely in it, and it made no sense to have the younger brother around if he wasn't going to have a singing career. The episode where Drew Tarver's character uses Grindr for the first time was stupid and offensive, like any gay man needs he straight female friend to tell him how to hook up.

r59 She was a writer on the new appletv musical series Shmigadoon

also if anyone enjoys Julie Klausner she does a podcast where she mostly just riffs on things. Her takes on movies she's seen are hilarious and she sees a very wide range of stuff, lots of arthouse films, documentaries, and studio garbage.

Molly Shannon doesn’t get as much fun material as Andrea Martin did on Difficult People, because Chris Kelly (the creator and EP) is clearly apotheosizing his dead mom (again) in the Pat character.

Julie Klausner WENT IN on her (still alive) mom with the Marilyn character and it was a hoot.

I love this show.