Showtime has been fairly puffed up over their latest entry into the pay-cable pile of drama series 'Huff.' They've been up against the HBO drama machine for years now, trying to find their own 'Sopranos.' Although they haven't yet found it, they've offered up the anti-'Sopranos.'
Showtime has cordoned the niche market with the gay-themed 'Queer As Folk' and 'The L Word,' the salty 'Family Business' and 'Penn & Teller's Bullsh*t,' and even put out the cleverly kinky, but little seen 'The Chris Isaak Show.' They came close to success with last year's entry 'Dead Like Me,' but nothing ever broke out of the niche pack to speak to a more broader audience... until 'Huff.'
Hank Azaria, the Lon Chaney of voice-overs for 'The Simpsons,' finally gets a leading role that he can bite into as Dr. Craig Huffstadt, nicknamed Huff, a fortysomething successful psychiatrist who seems too emotionally attached to his clients, his mom, bums on the street... well, pretty much everything. His loving and dutiful wife (Paget Brewster) would fly to the moon for him. His teenage son not only offers up insightful fatherly advice, but he appears to have never heard the phrase 'teen-angst.' His over-bearing mother (Blythe Danner) still dotes over him, while typically alienating his daughter-in-law. He's got a horny lawyer pal (Oliver Platt) who Huff lives vicariously through. And a brother that lives in a psych hospital, who the therapist turns to to spill his troubles. The series more resembles ABC's 'Once and Again,' rather than 'Sopranos.'
The show itself turns out to be sort of the 'Seinfeld' of dramas, with not much really going on. Huff's home life, though tangled with unrest between the in-laws, is not as tumultuous as say 'Everybody Loves Raymond.' His wandering eye, and constant goading from an unethical friend doesn't seem much of threat to Huff's upstanding moral fiber. This lack of big-time conflict is most likely by design, an effort to not make 'Huff' overly fantastic or bombastic (which makes the blood-splattered suicide much too divisive).
It's actually quite refreshing to see a drama avoid too much dramatics. The question is: why go to pay cable with 'Huff'?
