TV Review: Web Therapy

Showtime has announced a new TV show called Web Therapy, in which Lisa Kudrow plays a former investment banker trying to launch a business called "Web Therapy," in which she provides psychological advice in three-minute sessions. (She claims that the traditional 50-minute session is a big waste of time).

I don't know much about the Showtime series, but it is based on a hilarious web series that Lisa Kudrow has been doing for the last few years. She has gotten some great guest stars, including Meryl Streep (!) and Julia-Louis Dreyfus. Fiona Wallace, Kudrow's character, is a brilliant creation -- she's deceitful, selfish, and occasionally malevolent, but she is also a terrible judge of character, both her own and others. She knows virtually nothing about therapy, and her efforts to help her clients almost always end in disaster. The best scenes here are comparable to those scenes where Michael Scott insists on saying and doing things that make everyone uncomfortable.

We are fortunate to live in a time where concepts like Web Therapy and Dr. Horrible can be made and find an audience. It is increasingly clear that the folks in Hollywood are even more talented than we realize, and that a lot of their talent is being wasted on bland projects designed to reach a broad global audience, much of which does not speak English as a first language. To the extent we get more smart projects like this one that are designed for a much smaller audience, we will all be better off.