--- title: Review: The Comedians in Search of a Punch Line description: FX's inside-Hollywood comedy gets Billy Crystal, Josh Gad and a slew of cameos, but is less than the sum of its parts. canonical: https://time.com/3769100/review-comedians-billy-crystal-josh-gad/ author: James Poniewozik article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-04-09T13:02:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T05:39:35.695Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Review: The Comedians in Search of a Punch Line og:description: FX's inside-Hollywood comedy gets Billy Crystal, Josh Gad and a slew of cameos, but is less than the sum of its parts. og:url: https://time.com/3769100/review-comedians-billy-crystal-josh-gad/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt31319e435d69b846/69878670a988ca19b06ad357/comedians-eppilot_day1-scvarious_0709a_2_hires1.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: THE COMEDIANS -- Pictured: Billy Crystal, Josh Gad. CR: Ray Mickshaw/FX og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Review: The Comedians in Search of a Punch Line twitter:description: FX's inside-Hollywood comedy gets Billy Crystal, Josh Gad and a slew of cameos, but is less than the sum of its parts. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt31319e435d69b846/69878670a988ca19b06ad357/comedians-eppilot_day1-scvarious_0709a_2_hires1.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Review: _The Comedians_ in Search of a Punch Line by [James Poniewozik](/author/james-poniewozik/) ## James Poniewozik Apr 9, 2015 1:02 PM CUT  FX by [James Poniewozik](/author/james-poniewozik/) ## James Poniewozik Apr 9, 2015 1:02 PM CUT As a general rule, bad TV shows make for better TV than good TV shows do. _30 Rock_ was hilarious; _TGS_, from the glimpses we got, was mostly so unintentionally. (OK, I do still laugh at [“Someone put too many farts in this engine!”](http://www.hark.com/clips/rmxbkllxvp-too-many-farts-in-this-engine "undefined")) _The Mary Tyler Moore Show_ was a landmark of ’70s television in a way that it’s safe to say Ted Baxter’s newscast was not. _The Comeback_, _The Larry Sanders Show_ and _The Dick Van Dyke Show_ each made magic from the process of making, at least, highly challenged productions. FX’s _The Comedians_, starring Billy Crystal and Josh Gad as FX stars Billy Crystal and Josh Gad, is an unfortunate exception to this rule. The show-within-the-show is bad, intentionally so (I think). The show itself is worse, if only because there’s more of it. _The Comedians_ purports to be a making-of documentary about _The Billy and Josh Show_, a sketch comedy born after Crystal unsuccessfully pitches a solo show to FX president Denis Grant (Denis O’Hare, doing what I believe is a capable impression of actual FX honcho John Landgraf). The pilot tests badly; as Grant puts it, “We’re worried that we run the risk of too much… you.” He offers to buy the show if the comedy vet takes on a younger partner: Gad, whom you may know from _The Book of Mormon_, _1600 Penn_, _Frozen_, or thinking he was Jonah Hill. (The pilot makes a gag out of that latter mistake.) Neither comic wants to do it, but Crystal wants to get back on TV and Gad is burning through his savings. The resulting arranged marriage becomes a generational war of egos, a _Nashville_ of comedy, a _Smash_ of schtick. There was a time long ago when it would have been brave for two real comics to play themselves in this light, but the inside-the-funny-business-business premise has been tackled many ways by now. And in its first four episodes, _The Comedians_ will repeat nearly every one of those ways, not to its advantage. Every supporting character here is a toothless type: the basket-case producer (Stephnie Weir), the nebbishy writer (Matt Oberg), the entitled Millennial assistant (Megan Ferguson). Next to this, Showtime’s _Episodes_ (the broad inside-Hollywood comedy with Matt LeBlanc as Matt LeBlanc) is practically Robert Altman’s _The Player_. And _The Comedians_‘ departures from formula are worse: there’s a truly awful subplot involving a transgender character that’s essentially a “the guy’s a broad!” joke. (Ironic, since Crystal’s TV history includes the LGBT landmark of playing the first gay regular character in a sitcom on ABC’s _Soap_.) The teaming of Crystal and Gad seems like it should work on paper. They each have an old-vaudeville sensibility, and each feels committed to making his “character” as unlikeable as the show requires. But the series falls into a pattern–they try to connect, Billy gets defensive and passive-aggressive, Josh tries too hard and ends up saying or doing something excruciating–that it repeats so often you know when every beat will come. Gad ends up seeming like he’s laboring in the role, Crystal like he’s sleepwalking. The whole thing goes down like a cold Nate’n Al’s matzo ball. There are moments in _The Comedians_ that hint at greater potential. A subplot in the fourth episode, with Gad’s _Frozen_ songwriters Robert Lopez and Kristin Anderson-Lopez, pays off, and there are promising moments where Gad and Crystal connect in a way that suggests their characters are really at odds because they’re so much alike. But _The Comedians_ always returns to seltzer-down-your-pants mode, like it doesn’t want to challenge itself, or us. In the end, I’m left watching _The Comedians_ like the chagrinned FX executives watching the development of _The Billy and Josh Show_, looking at a project that had every advantage–the stars, the behind-the-scenes talent (including director Larry Charles), numerous celebrity cameos–but somehow never managed to gel. In that way, at least, life imitates the art that’s imitating life. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3769100/review-comedians-billy-crystal-josh-gad/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3769100/review-comedians-billy-crystal-josh-gad/"},"headline":"Review: The Comedians in Search of a Punch Line","datePublished":"2015-04-09T13:02:37.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T05:39:35.695Z","description":"FX's inside-Hollywood comedy gets Billy Crystal, Josh Gad and a slew of cameos, but is less than the sum of its parts.","url":"https://time.com/3769100/review-comedians-billy-crystal-josh-gad/","keywords":["Television","review"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt31319e435d69b846/69878670a988ca19b06ad357/comedians-eppilot_day1-scvarious_0709a_2_hires1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"James Poniewozik","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/james-poniewozik/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt31319e435d69b846/69878670a988ca19b06ad357/comedians-eppilot_day1-scvarious_0709a_2_hires1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"THE COMEDIANS -- Pictured: Billy Crystal, Josh Gad. CR: Ray Mickshaw/FX","caption":"THE COMEDIANS -- Pictured: Billy Crystal, Josh Gad. CR: Ray Mickshaw/FX","creditText":"FX","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3769100/review-comedians-billy-crystal-josh-gad/","name":"Review: The Comedians in Search of a Punch Line"}}]}] ```