‘Eagleheart’ Just Landed On HBO Max, And It Deserves Your Attention

You might think it impossible that a television comedy created, ostensibly, to parody the incredibly absurd, eternally syndicated, and Chuck Norris-starring crime-action program Walker: Texas Ranger would eventually transform into a surrealist nightmare which includes, in the last season, among other things, a captain (Jack Wallace) in the U.S. Marshal’s office that is central to the series, becoming physically and literally absorbed by his wooden desk, but I assure you that such a thing can and did happen. Let me try to explain Eagleheart, an Adult Swim show that ran for three seasons from 2011 to 2014 and just made its way to HBO Max, as best I can.

Created by Michael Koman and Andrew Weinberg, both staff writers on Late Night with Conan O’Brien (O’Brien himself was a producer on Eagleheart) the show was never exactly grounded in reality – the uninitiated might be surprised by how often someone’s head explodes, for example, and at one point the heroes do battle with a criminal known as the Sky Baron. But in the first season, the lead character of Chris Monsanto (Chris Elliott), an incredibly bloodthirsty U.S. Marshal, and his two comparatively non-violent (they’re still pretty violent though) partners – the smart and professional Susie Wagner (Maria Thayer) and the stupid, child-like Brett Mobley (Brett Gelman) – appear in stories that hew more-or-less closely to the original concept of the show as a Walker spoof. The early scripts (and throughout the series, most scripts were written by some combination of Koman, Weinberg, and Jason Woliner; Woliner also directed most of the episodes, and acted as showrunner) were perfectly matched to the comedic persona of Eagleheart‘s star, Chris Elliott. Best known for his weird and hilarious characters on the strangest and funniest years of Late Night with David Letterman, Elliott’s cult status would carry him through Get a Life, the brilliant, if short-lived, sitcom he co-created and starred in, and Cabin Boy, his one shot at carrying a motion picture. In fact, Get a Life somewhat resembles Eagleheart in its general premise. Though technically belonging to the genre, Get a Life used the structure of the sitcom primarily as a means of imbuing its absurd, occasionally psychotic stories (and characters) with a kind of TV normalcy that only vigorously underlined the ridiculous of it all. 

So in this sense, Elliott was the perfect choice to play Chris Monsanto. Eagleheart was entirely in keeping with the work he’d created, or helped to create, up to that point. Moreover, Eagleheart follows an arc of increasingly warped surrealism (in later episodes of Get a Life, Elliott’s character Chris Peterson frequently died at the end). While it’s true the very funny season one of Eagleheart included episodes that revolved around, for example, Monsanto’s ability to make a person explode with one punch (known as the Death Punch, about which Susie says “I thought it was a myth, like fibromyalgia!”), seasons two and three are something else again. 

In the first episode of Eagleheart‘s second season, “Gabey, Calvin and Stu,” Monsanto and his partners realize that the reason they got into law enforcement in the first place was to avenge the murders of their loved ones. Chris lost a son, Susie’s college boyfriend was murdered, and Brett’s favorite waiter was gunned down before his eyes. Much transpires in this story (it should be noted here that with a few exceptions each episode was 11 minutes long) but the short version is that their chief (Michael Gladis, about to be replaced by Wallace) created and staged each of those murders specifically to get the three of them to become U.S. Marshals. He was helped by various actors, and a baker who over the years made a cake in celebration of each of Monsanto’s kills. I won’t get into what happens to the chief, because I think it’s important to retain some level of mystery. But again, this is the first episode of the season. In the second episode, Brett has a strange mass removed from his body, which he raises as a child he has named Beezor. I hope I’m getting across certain vital aspects of Eagleheart.

Then, season three becomes a serialized account of the secret, underground, occult history of Monsanto and the U.S. Marshals. Brett is dead, having tried to kiss a woodchipper that had a woman’s face painted on it. This leads to an Internal Affairs investigation, and Monsanto begins a journey into Hell. Which culminates – and this is all I’ll say about the finale – with an homage to Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz. That film has apparently obsessed Chris Elliott for a good chunk of his life and career. Among other nods towards that picture is Elliott reproducing part of All That Jazz star Roy Scheider’s pre-showtime ritual in the classic Get a Life episode “Zoo Animals on Wheels,”but the one in the Eagleheart finale is a real jaw-dropper. It’s such a crazy choice, as so many choices made in the career of Chris Elliott have been, that I sometimes wonder about the supporting actors in the episode – I even wonder this about some of the show’s regulars – if during shooting they’re constantly thinking “What have I gotten myself into?”

Eagleheart is the only show of its kind that has ever existed. I don’t expect to see another one like it again, unless this same group of creators reunite, and are given the chance to once again create something truly unique. Since they did it once, I imagine they can do it again, and they deserve the shot. Whatever happens in the future, though, Eagleheart exists, and is complete, and is ready for a new audience.

Bill Ryan has also written for The Bulwark, RogerEbert.com, and Oscilloscope Laboratories Musings blog. You can read his deep archive of film and literary criticism at his blog The Kind of Face You Hate, and you can find him on Twitter: @faceyouhate

Watch Eagleheart on HBO Max