With Memorial Day on the horizon, Netflix has been positively brimming with new arrivals as of late, the most promising of which just might be Maria Bamford's "Lady Dynamite."
Created by South Park's Pam Brady and Arrested Development's Mitch Hurwitz, and starring Maria Bamford playing an ever-so-slightly warped version of herself, "Lady Dynamite" is experimental, it's meta-referential, it's well-written and masterfully performed (by Bamford and the shows regular cast, along with a stunning array of guest stars. Jenny Slate! Bridget Everett! Nicole Byer! John Mulaney! Patton Oswalt!), but most importantly, it discusses mental illness in a candid and nuanced manner.
In the show, Bamford's characters has recently returned to her life as a struggling stand-up comedian/actress in Los Angeles after a hypomanic breakdown and a stint spent in outpatient psychiatric treatment back while staying at her parents' home in Duluth, Minnesota. It's realistic, candid, but never gloomy.
Lady Dynamite mixes the ceaseless optimism and joyful enthusiasm of "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" with the meta-referential fourth-wall-breaking of "Arrested Development" and the aching self-awareness of "Louie." It is as exuberant as it is strange, with a nonlinear timeline and the occasional car turning into a rocket ship.
"Lady Dynamite" manages to do something as-yet unheard of from a sitcom--address mental illness and mental illness treatment as it at actually exists, beyond the self-diagnosed teenagers of the online world, and the ill-informed adults of the outside world.
References are made to hypomania, medication, and flashbacks of time spent in outpatient treatment in the psych ward are interspersed throughout the show's thirteen episodes. The surreal nature of the show lends itself to its masterful depiction of mental illness. In the psych ward flashbacks, the color scheme is is dreary, the sky it eternally cloudy and all of Duluth is rendered in shades of gray and blue.
In pre-breakdown scenes, the colors are super saturated, with Bamford's lips painted red and hair down in tight curls, her wardrobe is ultra-twee and all of the characters are talking just a little too fast.
"Lady Dynamite" is important because it is a female-driven comedy. "Lady Dynamite" is important as an experimental, alternative comedy in a landscape of bland multi-camera sitcoms. Most of all, however, "Lady Dynamite" is important because in an era where portrayal and discussion of mental illness can sometimes feel like walking a tightrope over a pit of alligators (if those alligators also had access to every internet comments section ever,) it portrays and discusses mental illness artfully and wonderfully. "Lady Dynamite" is important.
