Huff: The Complete 1st Season

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This made-for-Showtime television production has a slick, big-screen feel to it, with scene construction, pacing, dialogue, and shocking, quirky elements that could have come right out of "The Sopranos" or "Six Feet Under." It's cable, so there's plenty of foul language and sexual content, as well as some nudity and violence. And the filmmakers seem to take full advantage of that, crafting scene after scene that you'd never see on network TV.

"Huff" stars Hank Azaria ("The Simpsons") as Craig Huffstodt, a psychiatrist whose life takes a nosedive in episode one. Just as death stunned viewers in the first installment of "Six Feet Under," writer-creator Robert Lowry gets everyone's attention with a graphic suicide. Before we even get to know what Huff's normal life is/was like, we're introduced to a changed man—one who's rattled when the 15-year-old boy he's counseling kills himself in his office because the boy felt that Huff was siding with the parents, who berated him when he revealed his homosexuality. But this is also a comic show, as is made perfectly clear when a narcoleptic patient is handed her bill, starts laughing, and promptly passes out. Azaria plays both straight man and tongue-in-cheek humorist in this wry comedy-drama, which weaves together so many plots and characters that it comes darned close to being an ensemble work. At times it's a straight shrink show, at times it's like a CSI show, sometimes it has the quick pacing of "The West Wing," while other times it's a sensitive family relationship show. Director Scott Winant's credits include "thirtysomething" and "The West Wing," and it shows. No matter how kinky or gimmicky the action gets, people and relationships remain a focus.

Paget Brewster plays Huff's wife, Beth, whose relationship with her husband is the most normal thing in this show. Meanwhile, Anton Yelchin is the couple's strange-bird of a teenaged son, named, appropriately, Byrd. To give you some sense of Byrd's problems and the general tone of "Huff," in one memorable episode Byrd goes to a "blow-job party" and is discovered when his mom finds lipstick on his tidy-whities. "Soprano"-lovers will see in Blythe Danner, who stars as Izzy, Huff's meddling mother who's moved into the guest house above the garage, an echo of Tony Soprano's odd mom. But the real wild card in this deck is Oliver Platt, who clearly enjoys himself as Russell, an amoral attorney who snorts coke, swills booze, hooks up with hookers, and gets passed-out prostrate more often than Byrd masturbates. He's only slightly more moral on the job, as Huff discovers when he has to hire him to mediate on his behalf in a wrongful death investigation. Truth? What's that? Though Azaria and Danner revel in their roles, Platt is the fun one to watch. But you can never really go to the kitchen or bathroom without pressing pause, because you never know when an outrageous line will pop up. Example? When Beth gets into it with Izzy over her husband and her mother-in-law's son, she shouts, "You haven't taken your tit out of the man's mouth for 42 years. It's amazing the man's still upright."

All 13 episodes from season one begin with Huff talking to a patient and end with him talking with his schizophrenic, room-bound brother, Teddy (Andy Comeau). In the middle, strewn like land mines in Huff's life, are appearances and run-ins with a homeless Hungarian composer (Jack Laufer) who may be real, but because he disappears so quickly we're also led to believe that he might just as well be a figment of Huff's tortured imagination—a way for him to help someone after failing miserably to help that 15-year-old boy in his office. But to tell you the truth, I found the homeless Hungarian episodes heavy-handed and annoying—a gimmick in a show that's really so good that it didn't need one. Huff's time in the office is also not as interesting as the time he spends outside of it, and that's certainly a reflection of Lowry's own fascinations.

But the show's strength is its energy and its ability to surprise. Platt supercharges the show, but his antics will put off more than a few viewers. Put plainly, he's a sexist pig who also happily admits in an interview, when asked if he drinks, "Yeah, I've been known to knock down a few." Pressed to say how many per week, he says, almost proudly, "Sixty or 80," just as he happily admits to using pot, cocaine, and ecstasy. If logic prevailed, there would be nothing that Huff and Russell have in common, and their friendship would be hard to believe. But this is television, and chemistry is the only bottom line. And boy, do Huff and Russell have chemistry, as well as parallel situations. Just as Huff slides big-time this first season in a decline that has him questioning his own mental state, Russell spirals downward into an abyss of addiction.

1) "Pilot"—Forget mid-life crisis. Huff has a life crisis when a patient commits suicide in his office.

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