Yesterday on the treadmill, I watched Difficult People, a two season sitcom about two jerks, the Jewish Julie and the gay Billy (Julie Klausner, Billy Eichner. below). I've had a file of photos for a long time, so why not write a review?
Julie and Billy are trying to break into stand-up comedy as a pair. We only see snippets of their act, but it seems to involve insulting people. Plots often involve pop-culture name dropping or the pairs' crazy relatives. Among the famous guest stars are Amy Sedaris, Lucy Liu, Tina Fey, Mark Consuelos, and Kathy Lee Gifford.
Rounding out the cast are James Urbaniak as Julie's business suit-wearing husband, who works for PBS; Andrea Martin as her yenta mother; and Cole Escola, left, as the swishy queen who works with Billy at his coffee shop gig.
This episode, "Italian Piñata," begins with the pair walking past the Stonewall Tavern, where the Gay Rights Movement began: queens upset over the death of Judy Garland weren't going to take the police harassment anymore, and fought back. The Judy Garland angle has been completely discredited. These were young adults in the 60s. They were into the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, not some singer from their grandparents' generation.
Billy notes that it's National Coming Out Day, when super-hot A-gays who spend the rest of the year snubbing everyone who isn't a Greek god do their public duty by offering to introduce newly-out guys to the culture. It doesn't even matter if they're ugly or have a horrible personality -- or both, like Billy -- if you're newly out, you're in.
Julie Turns Italian: On their way to a horrible party that Julie's husband had to plan for his PBS job, in Hoboken, the pair drops into an Italian meat shop, where some ladies like Julie's jokes about "meat in my mouth." They have big hair, eat everything in sight, carry purses that "fell off a truck," and discuss what they'll do to the penises of boyfriends who betray them. Julie is in love! She announces to her mother and husband that she's coming out -- she now identifies as Italian! The two are horrified.
Mom works as a therapist whose client -- the famous Mink Stole -- has a daughter in a cult. They discuss deprogramming -- kidnapping the brainwashed girl and yelling at her until she "believes what I want her to believe." Mom thinks this would work on Julie.
Billy Turns Straight: Meanwhile, Billy and Julie go to a New Jersey gay bar, where he gets the idea of pretending to come out. He announces that he was straight until today, and Julie is actually his soon-to-be ex-wife. The gay guys, including bartender Pasha Pelosie, left, all want to welcome him into the gay community.
