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...Out of Order, a series about the ailing relationship of a husband-and-wife screenwriting team in Los Angeles, is also fond of breaking the fourth wall. The entire two-hour pilot is framed as a trial, with Mark (Eric Stoltz) addressing the audience as his jury: "I'm about to place my fate in the hands of you, the jury. Yes, you out there sitting on the couch with your remote control." Every so often, the camera pulls back to reveal the camera crew on the periphery of the "scene," or someone holding up cue cards. The show links this frolicking with form to Mark's occupation as a screenwriter. "Since I was a kid I've imagined my life as a movie, imagined a crew surrounding me," he voice-overs at one point. He and wife Lorna (Felicity Huffman of Sports Night fame) often have competing cinematic visions: Mark sees a family confrontation as a scene from Raging Bull, while Lorna imagines herself as Dirty Harriet blowing the Thanksgiving turkey to smithereens with a shotgun.
The meta-knowingness can be kind of funny: In one scene, Mark is relating how men have sex on the brain. For a moment, the camera scans the park with Mark's lusty eyes, physically appraising every woman that passes, then halts on a blond sex kitten who turns out to be jailbait. "Uh oh," Mark's subconscious mutters, "Polanski-ville. Not going there." But mostly the show is tiresome in that clever-for-no-apparent-reason way. Each of the two episodes I've seen includes a scene in which Stoltz comes across a machine that has an "Out of Order" sign, a self-reflexive gesture that serves no real purpose. The constant cinematic references and obtrusive, almost Godard-like alienation effects sit uneasily with what is essentially a naturalistic "quality drama" about marital dysfunction, partners growing apart, and the onset of middle age. Albeit with a more diffuse narrative, a fair amount of cunnilingus, and lots of flashy camera work (particularly effective during a scene in which Mark jigs around the room on Ecstasy). Drugs are matter-of-factly incorporated into the everyday life of these characters (Lorna has a weakness for pot), but without the dire consequences and repentance that are obligatory in network television. But the real new frontier for the new edgy TV drama is jerking off: Early into its recent series, Six Feet Under's Nate stopped by the side of the road to release some tension caused by his married-with-a-kid status, and during Out of Order we see Mark having a wank in both of the first two episodes.
The most interesting thing about Out of Order may be its gender politics. Lorna is the dominant one professionally, while Mark is an oddly epicene character, with a high voice (Lorna reprimands him for shrieking like a girl at their son's soccer game), a smallish penis, and a tendency to fill his emotional void by stuffing his face with chocolate and Pepperidge Farm Milanos. (He also dances around the room to Garbage's "Only Happy When It Rains," a cute Gen-X-reaches-midlife signpost.) When feminized Mark falls for soccer mom Danni, there is a faint air of the lesbian about their affair. Meanwhile, Lorna boozes and shoots the shit with her drug buddy Steven, a washed-up movie producer played by William H. Macy.
An awkward mix of glamour (power meetings with directors like Peter Bogdanovich), Thirtysomething angst, and superfluous postmodern gimcrackery, Out of Order manages to keep you watching even as it irritates. It's hard to identify with these wealthy characters—something the series self-consciously acknowledges: "I know, nobody sympathizes with someone in a Mercedes," Mark quips while driving his son to soccer practice. "But it's the best car I've ever had, so don't hold it against me, OK?" More frustrating is the sense that the show is grasping for a profundity beyond its reach. That's the new middlebrow for ya.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0322/tv.php