Eastbound & Down

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HBO’s irreverent comedy series Eastbound & Down stars Danny McBride (who created the show with Ben Best and Jody Hill) as Kenny Powers, television’s most fully realized and compelling comic creation since The Office’s David Brent. He’s a preening, cruel, deluded ex–star athlete who, despite a c.v. of degradation and selfishness that would make Caligula blush, effortlessly holds the audience’s sympathy and interest as he spirals ever downward, hitting bottom to discover even worse bottoms beneath. Underscoring the (hilarious) raunch is a strangely affecting melancholy evoked by dreamy cinematography and masterful use of montage, a novelistic attention to detail and character, pitch-perfect performances, and perfectly judged music cues that give the whole production the aura of a lost piece of classic seventies cinema . . . raw, rude, and ravishing.