When asked how to describe his brainchild Man Seeking Woman, series creator Simon Rich has to pause to think.
"It’s a magical, surrealist show about dating, so we have some universal themes and experiences that we’ve all been through and we try to illustrate them through a series of high-stakes metaphors," he says.
The absurdist comedy, now in its third season, is characterized by frequent spells inspired by sketch comedy; how sending a text can feel like a military-grade operation, men hibernating until women want to date them or comparing unwelcome boyfriends to illegal aliens.
SEE ALSO:9 TV crossovers we'd love to seeMan Seeking Womanfollows Josh Greenberg (Jay Baruchel), a classic TV "nice guy" who just can't seem to get the girl. While the first two seasons were about Josh's titular quest, Season 3 breaks from that established format; within minutes of the premiere, Josh got a girlfriend, Lucy (Katie Findlay), and every episode since then has been the two of them navigating their relationship.
"We knew that if we spent a few episodes tracking Josh and Lucy courting one another, that it would feel like old news and it would feel like a regression," Rich says. "That’s why we purposefully skipped all of that to make sure that from moment one we were breaking new ground for the show."
In episode 3, "Horse," one of the show's best to date, Josh's girlfriend and best friend Mike (Eric Andre) end up trapped in a mine together and Mike goes on to share Lucy's secrets about Josh at an international press conference. As punishment, Josh sentences Lucy to a medieval hanging attended by an uninhibited Rachel Dratch, who Rich describes as "one of the funniest people in the history of the world."
The show was borne of Rich's book, The Last Girlfriend on Earth, a series of short stories which initially made the most sense as a sketch show. Even though he wrote for Saturday Night Liveand drew inspiration from Kids in the Halland Mr. Show, Rich didn't want to do traditional sketch.
"We’re a surreal show that tries to portray dating not the way it actually happens, but the way that it actually feels."
"Another safer way to do it would have been Walter Mitty-style, where all the surreal, supernatural aspects of the show happen in someone’s head, but I didn’t want to do that," Rich says. "I wanted...to do a show where the surreal aspects were really treated as if they had actually occurred, and see if we could still figure out a way to juggle a narrative."
One of Rich's greatest thrills has been watching the show evolve, especially with an "honest, funny performer" like Baruchel at its center.
"I’ve been a fan of his for years and I knew that he was going to be the perfect guy to carry the show on his back," Rich says. "He’s done such a great job of grounding the scenes -- it doesn’t matter whether he’s playing opposite of a tentacled monster or a car or Jesus Christ, he plays every scene with real honesty and truth."
That's the genius of Man Seeking Woman. The sketch premises aren't treated as outlandish; the show exists in a universe where these things are normal, where one minute you find out your girlfriend's ex is a Japanese penis monster and then Trackanon descends from space to colonize the Earth -- but day-to-day life unfolds as we know it.
"Our philosophy on the show is to try to tell old stories in new ways," Rich says. "That’s what we’re always attempting to do. We’ll always say, 'What’s a story that we’ve experienced and lived through and seen a million times and then how do we do that story in a way that’s never been done before?'"
Man Seeking Womanairs Wednesdays at 10.30 P.M. on FXX.
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