GONE TO POT
Kathy Bates is wasted in more ways than one on ‘Disjointed’
HAT were they smoking?
That’s the question you’ll ask after watching a few episodes of “Disjointed,” a surprisingly lame new comedy from hit-maker Chuck Lorre (“The Big Bang Theory,” “Mom”) and David Javerbaum (“The Daily Show”). Lorre’s collaboration with star Kathy Bates proved Emmy-worthy when she did a 2012 cameo on “Two
and a Half Men” as the ghost of Charlie Harper (Charlie Sheen), but, as marijuana advocate Ruth Whitefeather Feldman, he hasn’t given the “Misery” star much to do except make lame jokes about Wal-Mart and other enemies of Feldman’s hippie mentality.
Ruth operates a cannabis dispensary in California. Now that the state has legalized marijuana use, she faces a choice: to operate a mom-andpop pot shop or to take advantage of the incipient “gold rush,” as her biracial MBA-educated son, Travis (Aaron Moten), describes it, and build a franchise. Up until now, she has staffed her store with stoner “budtenders” (Elizabeth Alderfer, Dougie Bald- “Disjointed” By ROBERT RORKE W win and Elizabeth Ho) and Carter (Tone Bell), a security guard and Iraq vet who suffers from PTSD. Her clientele includes Dank (Chris Redd) and Dabby (Betsy Sodaro), YouTube celebrities who are always high. Ruth likes her motley crew and things the way they are. Holding up a Pottery Barn catalogue, she exclaims, “This is not what I spent my life fighting for.” Taking a beat, she then sinks the joke. “What kind of schmuck buys pottery in a barn?”
While any of the show’s individual components might make a good “Saturday Night
Live” skit or — like Dank and Dabby — an entertaining YouTube video, they don’t cohere into a series with a rhythm or give the performers enough material to form a viable ensemble. Bates, an actress whose range has been fruitfully mined by Ryan Murphy over several seasons of “American
Horror Story,” is wasted here. Lorre and Javerbaum disguise “Disjointed’s” monotonous humor with an intrusive laugh track — could this be the only streaming series to offer this antiquated measure of wit? — and cutaway spoofs of TV commercials for potato chips and Marlboros that are funnier than the jokes delivered by Bates and company. Most predicable: for all of Ruth’s championing of subversive behavior, she is at heart a pushy Jewish mother trying to get Travis to “bang” an employee (Alderfer) so they can have “butterscotch babies.” Yikes. Stereotypes die hard on “Disjointed.”
Earlier this year on Netflix, legendary TV pioneer Norman Lear (“All in the Family,” “Maude”) retooled his comedic vision for a new generation of viewers, launching an updated version of one of his lesser comedies, “One Day
at a Time.” The result? No laugh track, ethnically diverse characters and a genuine performance by star Justina Machado. Lorre and Javerbaum could have used some of that inspiration. In their hands, “Disjointed” is a buzzkill. Available on Netflix