‘Forever’: Fred Armisen Once Again Proves Being Normal Is Super Bizarre

Amazon‘s kooky new relationship dramedy Forever examines the heaven and the hell that is marriage. The series follows Oscar and June Hoffman, played by former Saturday Night Live co-stars Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph. While Rudolph gets to shine as the emotional anchor of the series, Armisen runs away with most of the jokes. Oscar is an exasperatingly real character, full of passive aggression and whimsical notions about where butterflies ought to fly off to. Oscar Hoffman is also a perfect conduit for Fred Armisen’s own uniquely brilliant brand of normcore comedy.

Like many Saturday Night Live alums, Fred Armisen is a master chameleon. He can effortlessly shift into famous figures and bizarro characters. But what Armisen has that no other comedian has is a knack for honing in on the absurdity of “normalness.” Armisen is a master at finding the humor in an extra beat of silence or an understated statement. It’s why Oscar can get fretful about fork tines and obsessed with crossword puzzles. It’s also why one of the funniest lines in the series is when Oscar proudly tells June that it’s okay that she shoved a bullying child on the ski slopes. Armisen calmly says he’s spoken to the child’s father, and “good news, according to him, the little shit had it coming.” There’s a slight beat, and then in the same chipper tone, Oscar says, “So I guess it’s bad news for Jasper’s home life.”

For Oscar, life is about small ritual and keeping up appearances. He likes doing the same thing day in and day out. He enjoys looking on the bright side. He is, at a glance, a perfectly normal person, happily making his way through life obsessed with the simple pleasures. He’s also a not-so-subtly annoying person who has a way of making June feel bad about wanting more. In short, he’s the perfect Fred Armisen character.

One of the things Fred Armisen is best at is showing the bizarre side of normalcy. By rooting himself in the pleasantries of everyday life, he’s able to show off how attached we are to pointless affectations. Armisen’s humor is about the quirkiness in how we choose to behave. He’s interested in what we’re hiding with our modest civility. Are we trying to tamp down some roiling dark passion, or just some shallow thoughts that reveal us as losers?

But Forever isn’t the first place we’ve seen Armisen plunder this realm for comedy. It pops up in a lot of his old Saturday Night Live characters, and even more recently, in some of his bits on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Armisen is the bandleader on that show and occasionally Meyers challenges him to describe the contents of a book by its cover. It’s a delightful bit of improv in which Armisen stubbornly leans on surface details to reveal what’s inside the book. Meyers, of course, acts like Armisen’s task is impossible. Convention says you can’t judge a book by its cover, but Armisen flouts this. He does so with polite, stammering descriptions of what he sees, and sometimes the biggest punchline is that what’s on the surface is all that’s inside.

Oscar Hoffman is a character who embodies this. He clings to convention, and that’s almost all he is. Sure, he and June fight for a way to communicate with one another as the series goes on, but what Oscar reveals about himself isn’t a shocking surprise. He reveals that he knows he’s transparent, passive aggressive, and holding June back. What Armisen does that’s so masterful is that he not only finds a way to make this simple character so funny, but emotionally complex as well.

Watch Forever on Amazon