There’s a point in “Don’t Wanna Die Anonymous,” the series premiere of FX’s new show Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll, where everything makes sense. It comes after the cold open, much of which is shot documentary-style and features no less a talking head than Dave Grohl. No one will shut up about how great the Heathens, or their lead singer Johnny Rock, are; one person even says “It’s like the Who fucked the Clash.” So after a good five minutes of masturbatory praise, we see this on the screen: “Written by Denis Leary.”
Ah, now I get it!
To be fair to Leary – and the show – the mystique around Johnny Rock fades pretty quickly. It turns out the Heathens broke up the day their one and only album came out – a nice touch – and Johnny has fallen on hard times since. He’s still kicking around clubs with his former drummer Bam Bam (Louie‘s Robert Kelly, looking nothing like an actual drummer) and his two former backup singers. It’s at one of these clubs that Johnny makes a pass at a woman who turns out to be his daughter. This is played for laughs, and to make Johnny look like a creep, but only one of the two parties involved knew that they were related, and it was the one wearing a low-cut dress and beckoning Johnny from across the bar with a come-hither stare. If anything, Johnny’s mistake is understandable, and doesn’t deserve a knee to the groin (that really hurts, ladies). Readers: if one of you is my daughter, please don’t use that knowledge to trick me into a dick assault.
Anyway, Johnny’s prospects are pretty dried up. His agent, Ira Feinbaum – wait, quick sidebar. Denis Leary sat down at a computer to type the script for S&D&R&R, decided his agent needed to be Jewish, and he settled on the most stereotypically Jewish name he could think of. I’m surprised his name isn’t Rabbi Seth Talmudstein-Torahberg. Anyway, all he can offer Johnny is a gig playing in a Bryan Adams cover band or a Bon Jovi cover band, the name of which no one can quite remember. In the space of a few minutes, the band is referred to as “Non Bon Jovi” and “Jon Non Jovi,” the former of which is obviously better. Little mistakes like that really piss me off.
I guess the biggest problem so far with S&D&R&R is that Leary is trying to combine what’s clearly a passionate love for classic rock with his quite frankly dated standup material. There’s an uncomfortable moment in front of a hotel when Johnny can’t believe that the paparazzi is more interested in photographing Brody Jenner than they are in him. First of all, no one has cared about Brody Jenner for quite some time. Second, it sets Johnny up to deliver a tired, hackneyed tirade about how Kim Kardashian is only famous for her sex tape, and then for no reason he says he’ll suck Bruce Jenner’s dick if it’ll make him famous – before adding “If he still has one!” I get that Leary is trying to be edgy, but it’s just not working. The Brody Jenner bit was obviously, and awkwardly, shoehorned in, just so Leary could have his oh-no-he-didn’t moment poking fun at the one transgendered celebrity everyone will know. It’s a go-for-broke attempt at comedy – he’s literally yelling this to a crowd – and it falls flat.
That long, bitchy paragraph aside, I didn’t hate the show. It’s always hard to judge shows by their first episode, and I guess more than anything your enjoyment of Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll will depend a lot on your feelings about Denis Leary. I like him as an actor far more than I do as a comic, and if the writing duties on subsequent episodes are given to people with different sensibilities, this could really go somewhere.
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