Jay Baruchel, who plays Josh Greenberg in the FXX romantic comedy “Man Seeking Woman, ” talks about slapstick and the blessed combination of depressing and funny. He cites Rowan Atkinson and Michael Richards as major influences, but, upon further discussion, admits his school days in Canada also provided the inspiration to engage in physical humor. When he was younger, “a kid talked shit to me, I talked shit back to him. If he hits me, I hit him back, “ Jay told HitFix. However, at some point he said he stopped growing; “I realized I wasn’t gonna win… so to keep them from beating me up, I beat the shit out of myself. I would just fling myself into lockers. And they just left well enough alone after a certain amount of time.”
The writer, producer and co-star of 2011’s “Goons” said that what won him over to “Man Seeking Woman” was the script by SNL veteran Simon Rich, “It just made me laugh. For whatever reason, I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to quote-unquote funny shit.” Josh Greenberg, Bruchel’s character, spends a lot of time falling down; “For me, the sorta height of creativity is to be able to do something super funny and super-depressing in the same beat, sorta Peter Sellers things, ” he told HitFix.
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“Man Seeking Woman” is about Josh Greenberg’s first steps out on the dating scene again after breaking up with Maggie, played by Maya Erskine. Not everyone is so amused by the show; Sara Stewart of the New York Post gives the show a one star rating, and finds some of the humor contrived and even not so funny. “The absurdist scenarios fall flat, ” said Stewart, who added that the female troll who is really a troll might be amusing, but the very ugly Swedish girl is “mean and cartoonishly misogynist.” The potentially interesting idea that his ex Maggie wheeling around her new boyfriend Adolf Hitler, who was actually hiding away all this time had potential, but Stewart thinks it would have been more skillfully executed in a written piece than on the screen.
Well, you can decide.
