In an early episode of FXX’s absurdist sitcom “Man Seeking Woman,” our newly single protagonist Josh Greenberg (Jay Baruchel) contemplates the phrasing of a text to a woman he met a day earlier on the train. This, in the lawless world of the sketch-like show, manifests itself as a high-stakes feud between friends, family and important-looking men in dark gray military uniforms. His apartment is gone, replaced with what looks like the war room from “Dr. Strangelove,” and from all sides he hears frantic suggestions on what smart, funny, off-the-cuff thing he should say to ensure a first date. The scene rings true for anyone who has ever proofread a text message once or twice or three times over before sending it away; that self-inflicted struggle to come up with something clever feels like people shouting inside your head.
After everyone has said their piece, Josh processes the information and settles on something simple: “Hi Laura, it’s Josh from the train. Great meeting you. Want to get dinner this Friday?” The radio silence of panic that follows — a news station runs the headline, “Still No Response from Laura…The World is Standing By” — is ridiculous yet grounded in the kind of observational humor that has defined sitcoms from “Seinfeld” to “Modern Family.” The scene works as a sort-of thesis statement for the strikingly bizarre yet oddly familiar series.
The half-hour show, created by Simon Rich and produced by Lorne Michaels, gambles it all on the hope that people will invest in a narrative that can shift into parody at the drop of a hat. It mostly works; though the show’s premise of a hapless white dude looking for love in New York City is by no means original, it’s the metaphoric treatment of everyday millennial phenomena that sets it apart. When I watched the pilot episode over a year ago, I thought it was almost a little too clever. It begins with him getting dumped by his girlfriend, Maggie (Maya Erskine), only to walk away with an ominous storm cloud looming above his head. Later in the episode he gets set up on a date with a three-foot green troll in a pink dress. Maggie starts dating an undead, aging Hitler. I remember thinking to myself, condescendingly, “Oh, OK, yep, I see what you did there.”
But the observations get more straight-up bizarre from then on out — see the Japanese Penis Monster in “Sizzurp” for reference — and I began to realign my expectations for a sometimes uneven but mostly entertaining parody disguised as a sitcom. Nichols, who has written for both the “The New Yorker” and “Saturday Night Live,” has created something that feels like a short story and a spoof all at once. In its second season premiere, he continued to build on what made the first run special as well as shed more light on supporting players. It opens with Josh’s best friend, Mike (the loud and brash Eric André), getting the news that Josh has a girlfriend from two solemn military men.
On the one hand, it’s a spot-on riff of war movies like “Forrest Gump” or “Saving Private Ryan,” but it’s also a method of showing us a typical sitcom storyline in a different light. The rest of the wild episode manages to parody killer-in-the-cabin horror movies, as well as heavy dramas about absentee fathers (while Josh was away, Mike raised their daughter who he says was created because “we both jizzed in the same toilet and then it was struck by lightning”).
OK, so “Man Seeking Woman” may not be something like “Parks and Recreation” or “Black-ish,” where you get big character arcs and emotional revelations, and the lukewarm ratings may indicate that’s not what everyone wants. But in the seemingly endless landscape of television — a time when a sitcom can be just about anything — I think there’s a place for FXX’s ridiculous little comedy. The second season, three episodes in, has given viewers plenty of reason to be hopeful for the show going forward, establishing new relationships and further exploring Mike, his sister, Liz (Britt Lower) and his parents.
Once I got past the startling strangeness of it, I started to realize “Man Seeking Woman” actually makes a lot of the jokes and references other sitcoms half-heartedly commit to. It’s inventive by going all the way, accepting the audience knows it’s a work of fiction and not holding back.