FX’s Baskets may be the best-kept secret on television; the show just wrapped its first season but seems to have flown under most of the small-screen-watching world’s radar. True, it may have put off viewers with its largely pathetic protagonist, bleak setting (a dusty Bakersfield, California), and slow, sad sense of humor. But what at first seems like a weird (and possibly failed) comedic experiment is actually a delicately crafted combination of the expected and unexpected — and one of the smartest comedies in recent TV memory.
It’s no wonder Baskets is both bumbling and brilliant — it’s written by the dark comedy trifecta of Louis C.K., Zach Galifianakis, and Jonathan Krisel. Krisel comes to Baskets from Portlandia, which he directs and also cowrites with Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, and similarities between the shows certainly exist. But where Portlandia is in your face, Baskets is just a little off; where Portlandia embraces its own quirky nature, Baskets takes itself much more seriously.
The series stars Galifianakis as Chip, a clown who flunked out of a prestigious Paris clown school and is back in his hometown of Bakersfield, living with his mother and working as a rodeo clown. Chip’s inner circle also includes Penelope, his French wife for whom he is pining, and his twin brother, Dale (likewise played by Galifianakis, though the two characters are so different in personality, style, and voice that it takes an episode or two to believe it’s the same actor). After he gets in a scooter accident, Chip starts spending time with his Costco insurance adjuster, Martha (played by stand-up comedian Martha Kelly), the show’s deadpan underdog. For one-liners and dry humor, the audience can rely on Martha, who, with her monotone voice and the ever-drooping corners of her mouth, delivers most of the laughs. While Galifianakis’s Baskets brothers create the absurd scaffolding for the show, it’s Martha who is unexpectedly the true comedian.