Line #34 Series/BoredToDeath


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bored-to-death-season-2-poster_6575.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:[[{{Pun}} A noir-otic comedy.]]]]
3
4	->'''George Christopher:''' This all very insane and illegal, isn't it?\
5	'''Ray Hueston:''' It's very illegal. And insane.\
6	'''George Christopher:''' I like insane.
7
8	An {{Creator/HBO}} {{Sitcom}} created by Jonathan Ames that first began airing in September 2009. It stars Creator/JasonSchwartzman as [[AuthorAvatar Jonathan Ames]], a non-licensed private detective who [[ArcWords believes he can help people]]. After breaking up with his girlfriend Suzanne and discovering that she was the only thing he had, Jonathan puts an ad on Craigslist hiring himself out as an investigator. He attempts to juggle this life with working for a magazine run by George Christopher (Creator/TedDanson), a middle-aged man who is actively attempting to recapture his youth through drugs and sex. Jonathan's best friend, Ray Hueston (Creator/ZachGalifianakis), is a comic-book artist with relationship issues who begrudgingly helps Jonathan in his exploits any way he can.
9
10	The series was cancelled in 2011 after its third season. Now has a [[Characters/BoredToDeath work-in-progress character page]].
11	----
12	!!This series contains examples of:
13
14	* AbortedArc: In the season two finale, Jonathan is trying to decide if Nina should move in with him. She is never mentioned again in the third season.
15	* AccidentalAimingSkills: "I wasn't aiming for the boss." "What?" "Never mind."
16	* AffablyEvil: Jonathan starts a friendly conversation with the man who's taken hostage the woman Jonathan's been hired to find in the pilot. They end up smoking pot together before the cops bust in.
17	* AffectionateParody: Of film noir. Jonathan wants to be a HardboiledDetective but is so meek and mild (not to mention TheStoner) that he isn't very good at it.
18	* AllLesbiansWantKids: A lesbian couple hit up Ray for sperm in a coffee shop. When he obliges, they turn around and sell his sperm on the black market to all the other lesbians in the neighborhood, all of whom are also desperate to reproduce. They also lie horribly about Ray's qualifications to get more money out of their recipients.
19	* AlwaysABiggerFish: Jonathan, Ray and George escape a violent thug accidentally when they crash into the back of a police car.[[TooDumbToLive While high.]]
20	* AmateurSleuth: Jonathan becoming one of these is the premise for the show. Played with as he tries to make money doing it but isn't very successful.
21	* AndThisIsFor: "That's because of you, big nose!"
22	* ArcWords: "I believe I can help people."
23	* ArrestedForHeroism: The end of the first episode, subverted as Jonathan gets off with a warning.
24	* AsHimself: Creator/JimJarmusch and Creator/KevinBacon. Also Dick Cavett in season 3.
25	* AuthorAvatar: Jonathan Ames is the name of both the creator and the main character.
26	* BadassBookworm: Jonathan becomes one of these for all of thirty seconds when he uses a few {{Groin Attack}}s and a large tree branch to save Louis Green from some drug dealers.
27	* {{Blackmail}}: In one episode, Jonathan is hired to get back a sex tape from a woman who serially seduces men and blackmails them with the evidence. In another, Jonathan is blackmailed into throwing his boxing match against Louis Green when someone finds George's Viagra bottle.
28	* BourgeoisBohemian: George runs an upper-class magazine similar to ''The New Yorker'' and is an EruditeStoner. A major plot line involves him adjusting to the fact that his magazine is bought by a conservative company.
29	* TheBoxingEpisode: The first season finale, "Take a Dive", is a fight between GQ and Edition with Richard Antrem versus George Christopher plus Louise Greene versus Jonathan Ames. Ray ends up fighting their cartoonist for verisimilitude.
30	* BreatherEpisode: "Escape From the Castle!" after most of the [[DarkerAndEdgier darker]] season 2 threads are resolved.
31	* BritishBrevity: The show ran for three seasons of eight episodes each.
32	* BrotherSisterIncest: [[spoiler: Season 3 ends with Jonathan embarking on a relationship with Rose and deciding to not tell her that he has discovered she is his half-sister.]]
33	* CastingGag:
34	** Ted Danson's character dating a woman played by Mary Steenburgen. The two are married in real life.
35	** Stacy Keech, most famous for playing detective Series/MikeHammer, is revealed to be [[spoiler: Jonathan's father. Also Rose's.]]
36	* CatchPhrase: George saying "This is wonderful!"
37	* ChekhovsGunman: In the first episode of season two, Jonathan helps a cop by breaking into an S&M club and erasing its member database before a police raid (Said cop is on the member database.). In the season finale, the same cop returns and helps Jonathan solve a case.
38	* CloudCuckoolander:
39	** Creator/JimJarmusch, full stop. His apartment is completely bare so he can ride laps on his bike in it.
40	** Jonathan's mother really has her head in the clouds.
41	* ComplainingAboutRescuesTheyDontLike: Lewis, when he sprains his ankle and loses his glasses, leading to Jonathan rescuing him from the drug dealers.
42	* CoolOldGuy: George wants to be this. Desperately.
43	* CreatorCameo: The real Jonathan Ames guest stars in the second season as Leah's jealous ex-boyfriend Irwin who has a full frontal nude scene and [[spoiler:stabs Ray with an X-Acto knife.]]
44	* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Jonathan isn't exactly incompetent as a private detective but it’s ''very'' hard to see at first. Him bribing people also helps.
45	* DarkerAndEdgier: Season 2 has George getting prostate cancer and coping with awful new management at Edition, Jonathan failing as a writer, and [[spoiler: Leah leaving Ray]].
46	* DidNotGetTheGirl: [[spoiler: Ray does not win Leah back after he cheats on her with Belinda.]]
47	* DisguisedInDrag: Jonathan at the spa.
48	* DoItYourselfThemeTune: Jason Schwartzman sings the show's theme song.
49	* DrugsAreGood: It's probably easier to count the number of episodes in which the main characters are not smoking pot. Sometimes the character may become an EruditeStoner while under the influence.
50	--> '''Jonathan''': I still ''like the way pot makes me think'' - maybe ''it's healthy''.
51	--> '''Suzanne''': Pot is not healthy.
52	--> '''Jonathan''': ''They give it to cancer patients''.
53	--> '''Suzanne''': You don't have cancer.
54	--> '''Jonathan''': Not yet...
55	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Up until "The Case of the Beautiful Blackmailer", George has nothing to do with any of Jonathan's cases.
56	* ExactWords: "When I'm in this office, I'm a psychiatrist. But when I step out that door, I'm a father."
57	* {{Foreshadowing}}: Some.
58	** Jonathan says he fenced in college in "The Case of the Beautiful Blackmailer". He uses this skill in "Two Large Pearls and a Bar of Gold"
59	** Ray casual brings up that someone has been sending him hate mail in "Escape From the Castle", which is the main plotline in "Super Ray is Mortal!"
60	** After [[spoiler: quitting his job at Edition]] in "Super Ray is Mortal" George suggests that he might open up a restaurant, and also reminisces about a beautiful place he had on Jane Street. In season 3 he opens a restaurant on, and moves to, Jane Street.
61	** Jonathan mentions that he is going to appear on the Dick Cavett show in "Gumball!"
62	* GagPenis: Super-ray, Ray's comic book [[HerCodeNameWasMarySue alter-ego]], not to mention several other characters in "Make It Quick Fitzgerald!".
63	* GagNose: The size of Jonathan's nose is frequently the butt of jokes.
64	* GoneHorriblyRight: George sent Jonathan out to have a great youthful time so that she would realize that she wouldn’t marry her sixty year old fiance. Unfortunately Jonathan did exactly that.
65	* HeterosexualLifePartners: The three main characters are close friends and always backing the others up.
66	* HiddenDepths: Even though it was too late, Jonathan’s biological father did come back for him.
67	* HitMeDammit: The GQ cartoonist that Ray boxes with in "Take a Dive" is eager to try S&M. Unfortunately, he knocks out Ray so fast that he's not even hurt.
68	* HumiliationConga: [[spoiler: Louis Green in season 3 has crippling debt, is bumped from the Dick Cavett show which he has spent his entire life wanting to appear on, gets arrested, and winds up working a menial job for Richard, who constantly berates him.]]
69	* IAlwaysWantedToSayThat: Jonathan's [[spoiler: real father]] has always wanted to say "The prodigal son return."
70	* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: An interesting case. In the first season, all the episodes are "The Case of the [Blank]" or "The [Blank] Case" except for "Take a Dive" and "Stockholm Syndrome". For the rest of the series, all the episode titles are lines from the episode (with an exclamation point in the second season), with the exception of "Escape From the Dungeon!" and the final three episodes of season 2.
71	* IfYoureSoEvilEatThisKitten: Some drug dealers who abduct Jonathan and Louis try to force them to snort cocaine to prove they're not cops.
72	* InsaneTrollLogic:
73	** Ray calls out that Jonathan becoming a private detective is this as the latter isn't even able to articulate why he's doing it.
74	** Edition demands George go to rehab, even though (supposedly) he was smoking because he had cancer. Even though he (again, supposedly) thought it was being used strictly medically, they are going to [[KickTheDog force him to go to rehab anyways]] just because [[spoiler: the charts got mixed up and he was wrong]].
75	** The man who was impersonating Jonathan's reason for becoming a private detective.
76	--> '''Jonathan''': Jesus! That hardly qualifies you.
77	* InsufferableGenius: Louis is a pompous author with literary pretensions. He later became a SmallNameBigEgo after his HumiliationConga in Season Three.
78	* IrrationalHatred: It’s never explained why Louis hates Jonathan so much.
79	* JewishAndNerdy: Jonathan is called out on this multiple times throughout the show being a shy, introverted, and easily pushed around Jewish man.
80	* KarmaHoudini: The kidnappers in "The Gowanus Canal Has Gonorrhea!" get away with $2,000 and suffer no consequences other than having to deal with the protagonist for the night.
81	* KickTheSonOfABitch: [[ItMakesSenseInContext After accidentally almost killing Dick Cavett while trying to get the curtain to drop on Jonathan's segment]], Louis was arrested, lost his job, and ended up working as a busboy at Richard and Sons where Richard delights in humiliating him ForTheEvulz
82	* LaserGuidedKarma: Louis's segment in The New Dick Cavett Show was canceled in favor of Jonathan's. The revelation caused him to go through serious SanitySlippage.
83	* LighterAndSofter: The overarching plot lines in season 3 are much more lighthearted than the ones in season 2. At least, [[BrotherSisterIncest until the end]].
84	* LiteralMinded: Ray says that the all male changing rooms in the spa are an "Asian Sausage Factory" and George marvels at how a spa also produces Asian sausage and notes that he would like to try one some time.
85	--> '''Ray''': Are you sure you're the editor of a magazine?
86	* ManicPixieDreamGirl: {{Deconstructed}} by Stella, Jonathan's love interest in season two. While she's an incredibly fun stoner chick trying to get him out of his comfort zone, Jonathan is frequently left miserable due to her oddball ideas like polyamory and flighty response.
87	* MayDecemberRomance: Ray and Belinda, given Zach Galifianakis and Olympia Dukakis' age gap.
88	** Bernard and Emily
89	* MostWritersAreWriters: Though, while Jonathan is a novelist, Ray is a webcomic writer, and George is Jonathan's boss at a publishing company, writing isn't much of a plot point until season one's final two episodes where they get into a boxing match between GQ and Edition.
90	* NatureVersusNurture: Also qualifies as RewatchBonus as anyone watching will notice that [[spoiler:Jonathan and Rose]] are ridiculously similar to each other. Though Averted as well given the fact that neither of them are anything like [[spoiler:their father]] however.
91	* [[NeverBringAKnifeToAGunFight Never Bring a Cock To a Gun Fight]]: As the League of Rays found out.
92	* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: In "The Case of the Stolen Skateboard", after going through all that trouble to return a child's skateboard to win favor with his single mom, it turns out not only is the mom is uninterested, but Jonathan costs George a shot at romance and the ending strongly implies that Jonathan has the shit beaten out of him by skater punks.
93	* NotSoBadassLongcoat: Jonathan tries, but he can't really pull off a BadassLongcoat.
94	* OneHitWonder: In-universe example, Jonathan's first and only novel makes him one of these. The second season highlighted his anxiety about his sophomore attempt, which gets rejected. But by the third season, he's promoting a published work, which seems to be getting acclaim in the publishing world.
95	* PaperThinDisguise: Jonathan once tried to break into a spa using towels as fake boobs, butt and to cover his face. [[DidntThinkTHisTHrough It doesn't work.]]
96	* ParentalSubstitute: George to Jonathan. In "The Case of the Grievous Clerical Error!" as George goes into surgery.
97	--> '''Nurse''': Is this your son?
98	--> '''George''': Yes.
99	* {{Promotion To Opening Titles}}: Heather Burns, who plays Leah, Ray's girlfriend [[spoiler:in season one and ex in season two]] got this halfway through the second season. She doesn't get her own little animation bit, though, they snuck her name into the top-right corner of the screen during Ted Danson's bit.
100	* ProperlyParanoid: Richard Antrem has very little reason to believe that his wife Priscilla is having an affair when he hires Jonathan. [[spoiler:She is having one, and with George--who is also Antrem's nemesis and publishing rival--to boot.]]
101	** After Jonathan was framed for murdering George while high, he noticed that everyone around him was giving him a death glare and surmised that he was being followed. Ray and Jonathan shrugged it off as a drug induced illusion. It turns out he was right.
102	* RefugeInAudacity: The entire premise of the show is that Jonathan attempting to be a HardboiledDetective despite being a mild mannered pot smoking writer.
103	* TheReveal: [[spoiler: Rose is Jonathan's half-sister.]]
104	--> '''Ray''': In a ridicules situation you must always stay positive
105	* ShoutOut: Frequently made to great authors and books. Jonathan is particularly a fan of Creator/RaymondChandler.
106	* SicklyNeuroticGeek: [[JewishComplaining Jon]].
107	* SitcomArchnemesis:
108	** Petty, pretentious and unbearably smug Louis Green ([[Literature/CompleteWorldKnowledge John Hodgman]]), a literary critic who panned Jonathan's first novel and never passes up an opportunity to belittle him or insult him.
109	** George has a rival in the form Richard Antrem (Oliver Platt), editor of ''GQ'' magazine. Cranked up to eleven when after George leaves his post as editor of ''Edition'' to focus on his restaurant. A few episodes later, Richard opens his own restaurant specifically to try and drive George's out of business.
110	** Subverted in ''Take a Dive'' with Ray and the [=GQ=] cartoonist. While Ray gives the cartoonist a perpetual DeathGlare whenever they're together, the latter turns out to be a fan of the former and is overjoyed to share a friendly match with him.
111	* TheShrink: A Flavor One in "The Case of the Missing Screenplay" sends Ray into an [[CompressedVice extremely short-lived]] bout of self-awareness, which in turn causes depression. Said shrink goes on to "solve" all of Jonathan's issues in under five minutes, although [[spoiler:it might've been because he knew Jonathan wasn't there for advice and wanted him to cut to the chase.]]
112	* SkewedPriorities: After finding out that Jonathan was clinging to life while dangling from a clock, Ray decided to have sex instead.
113	* SmugSnake: Louis Green is Jonathan Aimes' SitcomArchnemesis. He is a pretentious book critic who eviscerated Jonathan's first novel and considers him an {{Archenemy}}.
114	* SpoilerTitle: "The Case of the Grievous Clerical Error!" title all but tells you [[spoiler: George never had cancer]].
115	* TheStoner: All three main characters are almost constantly stoned, usually while in risky situations. They alternate between this and EruditeStoner, depending on the circumstance.
116	* StonersAreFunny: Played mostly straight. Much of the show's humor derives from the fact that the protagonists are avid stoners, and while it sometimes gets them in trouble, it's [[PlayedForLaughs still funny]].
117	* SurpriseIncest: [[spoiler: Jonathan finds out that he and his girlfriend are half-siblings]]. However, it was LeftHanging due to the show being cancelled.
118	* ThisLoserIsYou: Much of the series is CringeComedy about how Jonathan is a constantly put upon NiceGuy who fails at most of what he tries to do. PlayedWith as he also is with a variety of beautiful women and a semi-succesful author as well as journalist.
119	* ThrowingTheFight: George does this in the appropriately named episode "Take A Dive".
120	* TooDumbToLive: Louis Green {{Jerkass}} nature makes him this as he doesn’t seem to realize that it's not the perfect time to insult someone when you’re surrounded by deranged drug dealers with guns pointed at your face.
121	* TookALevelInBadass: Surprisingly, Jonathan's cases go from things like recovering a missing skateboard to dealing with blackmailers and drug dealers. He's also surprisingly good at detective work once he gains some confidence.
122	* UngratefulBastard: After Jonathan saved his life, Green wrote an insulting story about him to the ''New York Times'' and later tried to steal his job.
123	* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: Ray is a selfish ManChild with an infantile obsession Regarding his penis (basically the centerpiece of his web comic), who mooches off his girlfriend, [[spoiler: cheats on her with an older woman at one point]] and is often intoxicated when he is supposed to be watching her children or his infant son.
124	* VillainDecay: Louis Green goes from snob to sad-sack in the third season after his arrest on the Dick Cavett show.
125	* WhamEpisode: "The Case of the Grievous Clerical Error!"
126	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: A frequent occurrence with love interests.
127	** Suzanne, Jonathan's ex in the pilot, drops out of the show after four episodes despite being Jonathan's primary motivation.
128	** Nina is never mentioned in the third season after the climax of the second season is them moving in together.
129	* WillTalkForAPrice: Jonathan frequently bribes people in order to gain information regarding a case.
130	* WetBlanketWife:
131	** Suzanne, Jonathan's season one love interest, is always trying to get him to stop drinking as well as smoking pot.
132	** Leah is determined to improve Ray and make him a better person despite the fact Ray has no interest in being one.
133	* WomenAreWiser:
134	** Rose is a better detective and more competent person overall than Jonathan despite their similarities [[spoiler: due to being his sister.]]
135	** Averted in all other places as even Leah is just as [[ItsAllAboutMe emotionally needy]] as Ray, she's just more adult oriented about it.
136	* WunzaPlot: A failing novelist, a comic-book artist, and a wealthy magazine editor, all of whom are stoners.

Context Series / BoredToDeath