Starz Network’s new show, Blunt Talk, premiered on television last night. The story is equal parts hilarious and sad. We know the title character, Walter Blunt – played by Patrick Stewart of Star Trek Next Generation fame, is a desperate mess, but his actions keep us laughing the whole way through the episode.
The show opens with Walter in a bar, telling the bartender a bawdy story about a soldier losing his testicles during the depression and being paid a quarter of a million dollars in restitution. He is obviously drunk beyond reason. He asks the bartender if he’s seen Harry, and when met with a negative turns to go. Before leaving he runs into the piano player, Jeffrey, who is played by – surprise! – Brent Spiner. Spiner played android Data on Stewart’s Star Trek show. We’re unsure if this was just a quick cameo, or whether Spiner’s character will be recurring. Hoping for the latter. Jeffrey name drops to Blunt, showing us that Walter is someone famous.
Walter gets in his car, takes a swig from a flask, and eats a bit of marijuana chocolate. He blares rap music, singing along, until he sees a woman being harassed on the sidewalk. He pulls over and offers her help to which she asks him if he wants a date. He looks shocked and says, “Are you a lady of the night, a courtesan?” She tells him she’s a goddess and a model and he tells her he wants the date, so she climbs in and they head for an alley a couple blocks away.
Once they’re in the alley, the prostitute, Gisellie, tells Walter she’s a transsexual. He asks if she has an intact penis. She replies, “Let’s just say I have a nine inch clit. Does that bother you?” Walter just looks at her steadily and says, “No, I’m English,” as if that’s an explanation for everything. He asks to suckle for comfort due to his life being difficult, but just as he’s about to, a cop car pulls up behind them.
Gisellie makes a run for it, but a policeman catches her. Walter thinks he’s being too rough with her and attacks the officer. There is then a hilarious chase scene where they run in circles around Walter’s car before he climbs on top. When the police tell him to get down, he screams, “No! Everyone go away!” and that he needs Harry. As soon as Walter yells Harry’s name, his manservant awakes in the backseat of the car and climbs out with his hands up.
Walter tells Harry that he doesn’t feel well due to the chocolate marijuana to which Harry scolds him and tells him that he should, “think of them as time released vitamins – take very little.” Blunt then begins quoting Shakespeare. Harry informs him that it’s the wrong audience for Hamlet to which Walter seems genuinely surprised. The next shot is Harry saluting him as Walter is driven off in the back of a police car.
When Walter leaves the police station, we find out through reporters that he has multiple ex-wives. After leaving the station, he goes straight to work. His sycophant workers tell him about the “shitstorm” he has caused and that the boss, Bob Gardner, is looking to fire him. Blunt confronts Gardner, trying to get one more broadcast out of him. Gardner is reluctant until Walter offers to give him his Jaguar. After that he agrees, but says Blunt has to see a shrink because his “frontal lobes are shot.”
Walter wants to find a way to make a plea to his viewers to not give up on him. His assistant, Rosalie, offers to spoon him while he thinks and even “stimulates his intellect” by tweaking his nipple. At this moment, Blunt decides to do a self-interview through a split screen and recorded questions.
Because Walter is exhausted, another of his assistants gives him “speed.” Walter then proceeds to see the psychiatrist, played by Richard Lewis. Walter begins to feel woozy and passes out after telling the shrink that he seems to be “running out of dreams” for himself, hence the title of the episode. Turns out the three speed pills he took were really Ambien. Lewis, however, deems him fit enough to broadcast.
Walter heads off to record his questions. He records various emotional responses first, which is ridiculous, but hilarious. He ends up passing out again, after recording the questions in an “Ambien blackout.” Harry then pulls out a vial from the shrink meant to counteract the Ambien. Turns out it’s a mixture of speed and cocaine. They each do a line and remark how they couldn’t live without each other. Blunt also remarks that they should make another appointment with that shrink.
The show then moves on to the preposterous interview. Blunt looks like a fool. Turns out he shattered the policeman’s testicles when he hit him. Blunt says on air that he will give the police officer half a million dollars in compensation, repeating the story from the bar at the beginning of the show and saying how it should make up for inflation. He argues with himself for being a bully, then gets up and asks the American people for forgiveness, saying he will wield the truth. He then collapses and the screen goes black with Harry hovering over him screaming, “Don’t leave me, Major!”
Thus ends the show. Definitely a cliff-hanger for next week. As I stated before, the main character is both pathetic and funny, and the show plays off of that mix greatly. We feel sorry for Walter even as we laugh at his predicaments. Can’t wait to see what next week holds.
Image courtesy of Famous/ACE/INFphoto.com