Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
For a sitcom about marijuana, Disjointed plays almost shockingly square. All the details are right: The strain descriptions, the politics, the cannabis industry’s weird relationship with money. And yet, even though Disjointed contains a fair share of f-bombs and constant, glorious drug use, it doesn’t feel like a stoner show. I can think of dozens of better examples of programs for pot consumption, including Bojack Horseman, Atlanta, Broad City, Twin Peaks, Rick And Morty, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and, of course, my favorite show for the munchies, Food Paradise. Like I do most TV, I watched all of Disjointed baked out of my shorts, and I maybe laughed twice in 200 minutes. It’s a show about marijuana, but not by marijuana.
Disjointed is a standard multicamera number from Chuck Lorre, creator of the much-reviled and very popular Two And A Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. It has an annoying laugh track, a bland but pretty supporting cast, clichéd “annoying neighbor” characters, and all the production values you would expect from the mind behind Mike & Molly. It is also the worst-reviewed show of the season, by far. Critics have met it with groanworthy disses, describing it as “as stale as an unwashed bong” and warning readers to “puff, puff, pass on this messy sitcom.” (Note to self: Never get high with other TV critics.)
Lorre and co-creator David Javerbaum initially pitched Disjointed to CBS, and though Lorre has been touting the “creative freedom” of Netflix in various interviews, the scripts still contain a lot of network DNA. Kathy Bates’ character, an AARP-grade old-school pot activist, makes jokes like “Who gets pizza from a hut?”, “Who gets pottery from a barn?”, and “You’re a real bloomin’ onion.” Those lines would have gotten her kicked out of The Laugh Factory in 1992.
In Disjointed’s world, as in the real world, marijuana is fun, normal, and the future.
There’s also a strange Hollywood Jewiness to the show, sitcom clichés that work on Curb Your Enthusiasm or Entourage. But it doesn’t make any sense to have a rando stoner say “I don’t want to be a shonda” while puffing on a bowl of Blue Dream. That just means that someone wasn’t editing the scripts correctly. The first season’s final episode, spoiler alert, features a DEA raid on Bates’ pot dispensary. But it’s not just a DEA raid, it’s a DEA raid headed by “special agent Barry Schwartz,” hammily played by Richard Kind. The show is so oxymoronically (or maybe just plain moronically) Jewish that the main characters get busted by Cousin Andy.
Disjointed also features “Dank And Dabby,” the two most annoying characters in TV history. Dank And Dabby are a couple of stereotypical stoners who have a YouTube channel about smoking a lot of pot. These types of people do exist in the real world, but none of them are as shouty and annoying as Dank And Dabby, who are disastrously unfunny and really need to be extracted from future episodes like Poochie. When they are onscreen, Disjointed goes from being a little stiff-feeling to being actively unwatchable.
All that schmutz aside, the show is still a significant cultural milestone. It celebrates the cannabis revolution in a way that has never been seen before. People are getting high in every scene, unapologetically and as a matter of ethical principle. Stoners get portrayed as rich housewives and successful businesspeople. They are occasionally flaky, but their skin glows with health. In Disjointed’s world, as in the real world, marijuana is fun, normal, and the future.
There are also moments when Disjointed displays genuine creativity. The fake commercials set in a world where marijuana is fully legal don’t always hit, but some of them, like a fake Marlboro ad where a bong-hitting cowboy falls off his horse, feel spot-on. In the finale, Kathy Bates gives a sharp monologue indicting the drug war that sounds like the best work of Norman Lear. It could easily have come out of Maude’s mouth.
The subplot featuring the shop’s security guard, an Iraq war veteran suffering from a bad case of PTSD, is effective and moving. They tell his story through animation, which needs no laugh track and has a ton of narrative depth. When he has his first toke of marijuana, there’s a wordless, stunningly beautiful, and surprisingly long animated depiction of what cannabis does to his brain. A green goddess flows through his cortex, transforming his synapses, healing his pain. It’s not only deeply sympathetic, but also shockingly progressive, and one of the most revolutionary things I’ve seen on TV this year.
If Disjointed would just have the courage to throw off the sitcom shackles, it could be a really important show. They already have Nicole Sullivan walking around hamming it up, so why not take it the full MAD TV route? The pot shop can be a recurring setting, with recurring characters, but stoners really want to see the commercials and the cartoons. That’s why we watch TV, not for meet-cute scenes between mediocre sitcom actors. Please, though, no more Dank And Dabby sketches. Cannabis Nation deserves better.
Neal Pollack (@nealpollack) is the author of ten bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction. His latest novel is the sci-fi satire Keep Mars Weird. He lives in Austin, Texas.
