We just heard that Will Ferrell and Adam McKay are developing a new comedy series for HBO with Lizzy Caplan, but on August 17th yet another comedy series from the Anchorman collaborators will debut on Comedy Central with back-to-back episodes. Big Lake is a new half-hour sitcom about a big city banker, played by Chris Gethard (The Other Guys). He loses his job, his father’s nest egg, and retirement fund, then moves home to his parents’ couch in Big Lake, Pennsylvania, where Saturday Night Live alums Chris Parnell and Horatio Sanz are already waiting for him. Hit the jump for more details on the new series including an extended trailer for your viewing pleasure.
Once Josh (Gethard) falls back into Big Lake, he reunites with his childhood best friend Glenn Cordoba (Sanz) who has just been released from a minimum security prison and Mr. Chris Henkel (Parnell), Josh’s favorite teacher from his high school days. Meanwhile, Josh’s dysfunctional family isn’t too happy to have him back under the roof. His father (played by the fine character actor James Rebhorn), is constantly trying to kick him out of the house, his mother (Deborah Rush) is on too many diet pills and his 13 year-old brother (Dylan Blue) is running some sort of small crime empire. In the quest to earn back his father’s retirement fund, Josh and his friends are constantly distracted by iguanas, fighting bears, Serbian death metal enthusiasts and more.
In the premiere episode, Josh returns to Big Lake and in order to quickly make some money, sets out to get a baseball signed by both Barry Bonds and Marilyn Manson. Right after the series premiere, the second episode keeps the show rolling when Josh’s friend Glenn discovers evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald once lived in his family home and proposes to the mayor that they build a memorial site and amusement park called “Lee Harvey Osworld.” If these are the kind of antics that will keep on coming the rest of the season, this just might be worth checking out on August 17th at 10pm EST on Comedy Central. Decide for yourself after watching the trailer below.
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that looks so unfathomably bad
You beat me to the punch, rob frenay, you beat me to the punch
i agree. plus it has a laugh track. why?
Part of me is thinking that the laugh track is actually some form of parody of sitcoms that use it as a legitimate element of their show. It's that thought which has prompted my believing this show is actually funnier than it seems on the surface.
Or – and I'm just throwing this out there – after showing it to a test audience they realized the room was too quiet and added in the laugh track to ease their fears. “Hear that?! They love it. Love it!” “Uh sir…” “No, no, let him have this one, he just got fired by NBC, getting fired by HBO a month later would crush him.”
McKay mentioned that they screened the episodes at the UCB Theatre in New York to get the live reaction from people. So, it's not an artificial laughtrack, but the laughter of an actual crowd at a comedy club. Which is a plus.
That … looked … horrible.
I've seen about 6 episodes of Big Lake and I assure you it is much better than the trailer.