Crashing: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Crashing: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie Review

No 'Girls' Allowed.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 31, 2017

There has certainly been no dearth of offerings about stand up comedians both on television and in cineplexes. Seinfeld, Louie, Punching Henry and Obvious Child are just a few of the many entries that have often featured stand up comedians playing some form of themselves, often in contexts that make their personal lives seem far removed from the glamor and glitz that many outsiders tend to associate with a life in show business. Add to that list Crashing, an often very funny but still somewhat derivative feeling series that features Nerdist and Comedy Central favorite Pete Holmes playing a fictionalized version of himself. This particular iteration of Pete Holmes is not in fact a Nerdist and Comedy Central favorite, and is struggling to find his comedic voice while also recovering from the devastating end of his marriage to Jessica (Lauren Lapkus). The series features a regular supply of well known stand up comedians playing themselves (more or less, anyway), and it has some insider humor about what it’s actually like to work the club circuit. But much of its humor stems from Holmes’ kind of inherently awkward quality, and some of the biggest laughs the series offers are the direct result of almost slapstick laden vignettes involving the hapless Holmes, a nice guy who nonetheless lacks a certain amount of common sense and who is unsure of how to behave with a modicum of social grace.

The Crashing of the series’ title probably most overtly refers to the show’s conceit of Pete camping out at various comedians’ apartments in the wake of his marriage ending, but it could just as easily be about that actual dissolution, since it’s indicative of his less than successful adult life. The series starts with a typically awkward Pete attempting to have “wild and crazy” sex with Jessica (who initiates the contact), failing pretty spectacularly in the process. Later when he comes home unexpectedly to find Jessica in flagrante delicto with a hairy hipster type named Leif (George Basil), Pete is shocked but outraged. He hightails it to Manhattan where he has a disastrous open mic performance which is witnessed by Artie Lange, leading to Pete’s first “camp over” experience.

And it’s these contributions from the array of “guest stand ups” that allow Crashing to find some of its most distinctive material. Lange is hilarious in the first two episodes, becoming a virtual Virgil leading Pete’s Dante through this semi-divine comedy, which in fact tends to look a lot more like purgatory or even hell from time to time. While Pete looks up to Artie (and, later, other comedians like T.J. Miller and Sarah Silverman) as symbols of what grabbing the comedic brass ring looks like, all of the guest stars provide more than ample evidence that personal psychological foibles don’t up and disappear when paychecks increase. Lange is especially notable in this aspect, and Lange’s battles with addiction provide some uneasy feeling humor, pointedly after he enlists Pete to be his “substance referee”.

The series is probably less successful, and concomitantly more predictable, in its depiction of Pete’s attempts to make his way in the wild and wooly way of standup. Holmes’ likable and inordinately sweet demeanor is intentionally played for unironic laughs, even when the comedy club audiences aren’t laughing, but that discomfiture becomes increasingly rote, and is ultimately abandoned (kind of weirdly), with Pete suddenly finding his “voice” late in the series’ first season. Pete’s past as a would be youth pastor and his still evidently powerful Christian beliefs would seem to be an odd fit with the general environment of stand up comedy, but Crashing only approaches this element discursively and intermittently, usually offering Pete’s relative naivete as a contrast to other stand ups’ jaded sensibilities.

The “No ‘Girls’ Allowed” deck above under the series’ title refers to the fact that with the imprimatur of Judd Apatow and a home on HBO, Crashing might be seen as a sibling of sorts to Girls, but if anything Crashing is almost an “anti-Girls” in that it’s almost relentlessly sweet and only occasionally provocative sexually (and hardly ever in the way the Lena Dunham show tends to be). Holmes’ inherent “nice guy” persona might seem like at least something of an odd fit with Apatow’s often skewed and at least occasionally scabrous sensibilities, but it’s a rather comfortable fit in the long run (and it should be noted that Apatow only co-wrote three episodes and directed two episodes of this first season).

Ultimately it is Holmes’ sweet natured likability that carries this show, even when it’s not particularly innovative. The many guest stars traipsing through the premises give it an undeniable feeling of authenticity, but it’s Holmes’ show all the way, and the good news is, despite one of the central conceits of the series, Holmes is a very funny gentleman.

Crashing: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Crashing: The Complete First Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The IMDb lists this as having been shot on good, old fashioned film, and the results are nicely textured and organic looking for the most part. There are occasional deficits in shadow detail (including some outright crush) in some of the very dimly lit club scenes, since it seems like the directors of the various episodes wanted things to look as authentic as possible (i.e., no artificial, amped up lighting is employed). Outdoor material resonates best, with generally excellent detail levels. There are just very minor hints of some compression anomalies in some of the darkest scenes, but nothing that I'd term overly problematic.

Crashing: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Crashing: The Complete First Season features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that smartly utilizes the side and rear channels during club scenes, where some raucous audience noise (including heckling) can emerge directionally. The series also benefits from some Manhattan scenes where ambient urban noise is quite realistic sounding. Dialogue is cleanly and clearly delivered and always well prioritized on this problem free track.

Crashing: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One

• Guest Star Fan Club offers brief featurettes devoted to:

  Artie Lange (1080p; 2:08)

  T.J. Miller (1080p; 2:16)

  Hannibal Buress (1080p; 1:44)

• Comedy Extras provide more snippets about:

  T.J. Miller (1080p; 1:09)

  Apurna & Pete (1080p; 4:33)

Disc Two

• Pete Holmes: Faces and Sounds (1080p; 57:02) is the most substantial supplement offered on this two disc set, capturing Holmes in a live performance and instantly putting the lie to Crashing's assertion that the Holmes "character" keeps bombing in front of audiences.


• About Crashing (1080p; 1:48) is a very brief EPK with Holmes.


• The Art of Crashing (1080p; 2:38) is another EPK, focusing on the trials of starting out in the comedy business (which includes crashing on friends' couches).


• Guest Star Fan Club offers a brief look at:

  Sarah Silverman (1080p; 2:55)

Crashing: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

My wife runs a popular stand up show that typically plays to SRO audiences here in Portland, a show which she and her producing partner insist consists mostly of "clean" material, something that Holmes also attempts to do in his stand up performances. It's not always easy to wring laughs out of an audience when you can't resort to endless f-bomb dropping, though, and it's probably no coincidence that many of the "guest stand ups" running rampant through Crashing do in fact evince a much more nasty attitude than Holmes himself, as if Holmes and Apatow realized that too much of a nice guy wouldn't be very funny. Crashing can't help but seem old hat at times, what with the glut of other properties featuring stand up comedians playing versions of themselves, but it's rarely less than entertaining and it has some undeniably laugh out loud moments scattered throughout the first season. Recommended.