“Patrick Stewart in a comedy, that’s so interesting”, Albrecht said he remembered thinking.
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Particularly in the wake of the absolute disillusionment with media icons like Hulk Hogan and Bill Cosby, another celebrity personality crumbling under the weight of his own success and ego isn’t a fantasy. He is. What about when he’s watching some preschoolers sing a song? TV news personality Walter Blunt (played by Patrick Stewart)* sits alone at a bar downing whisky after whisky and talking to the kind of patient, magnanimous bartender that only exists in movies and TV. He shoulders this burden with an élan that buoys the whole enterprise. Walter is at his most childlike when he is with Harry, asking him innocently, “have you ever realized that drinking actually makes you sadder?” That series had more shades of gray than Blunt Talk, more fun, better written characters, and less cynicism.
That’s a zany setup, but Stewart also thrives in scenes that ask for less intensity.
Because this is a MacFarlane show, characters drop a lot of famous names for cheap jokes and have moments in which they break out into impromptu song or dance. I wasn’t able, timing-wise, to have the other guys on. With that, he shrugs off a complicated privacy issue so affably that it’s hard not to laugh. Men like Stewart and Ames seem to comprehend the esteem with which Trekkies hold that universe, and seek to honor that type of loyalty. Then, the other night at the premiere, I met LeVar Burton, and Im like, Ive got to work some of these people in. “I thought, ‘Wow, Patrick Stewart would look really cool in front of such a background”. But Blunt himself has a habit of behaving in less than civilized fashion. Blunt Talk also trades in confronting taboo and exploring the sexual exploits and private fetishes of its characters to the point of over-saturation, but Stewart calms the waters with his staid proclamations: “the Windsors gave a quarter of a million dollars for ruined testicles in the 1930s, so I feel half a million is appropriate from me now”.
Stewart and Scarborough worked together only once before the series in a BBC radio play when Stewart portrayed Raymond Chandler and Scarborough was Billy Wilder.
Ames has his peccadilloes.
Equally fortuitous for us, no one told Blunt. The mere fact of substance abuse strikes Ames as inherently hilarious, which gets tiresome-especially in the premiere, where Blunt and Harry consume every upper, downer, and in-betweener they can get their hands on. In some regards, the show works as a retort to the laughable self-seriousness of Aaron Sorkin’s limp HBO drama “The Newsroom”; in another way, “Blunt Talk” might contain just a passing blow at the blessedly brief tenure of Piers Morgan at CNN. Timm Sharp plays Jim, the aforementioned hoarder, with a believable neuroticism that mostly steers clear of caricature. I’m not saying I’ve never been in a post-coital situation before, but I’ve never had to perform one in front of the camera. The show slumps to a standstill, however, when it indulges in sappy scenes like one where young producer Martin (Karan Soni) mashes his face into the breasts of his matronly boss, Rosalie (Jacki Weaver), taking deep sniffs of her perfume.
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Stewart had his own experience in news at a young age.
