Zach Galifiniakis' spectacularly drab America

Baskets' portrait of the country is fit for a sad clown

Zach Galifianakis stars in "Baskets."
(Image credit: Colleen Hayes/FX)

Season one of Zach Galifianakis' Baskets was not a happy affair.

The dramedy of Galifianakis' Chip Baskets, a literal sad clown in a TV landscape full of them, concluded its first season by shuttering the Bakersfield rodeo where Chip worked. "Got ourselves a cease and desist order from the humane society," says his boss Eddie, a charming caricature of a decrepit cowboy. "Reckon I'll ride out west, hold me up a train, get my ass all shot up, die in a creek somewhere." Of course, this makes no sense, even as a fantasy of living in a Western. "Riding west" from Bakersfield will land you in San Luis Obispo, and the cowboy thing doesn't work quite as well on the beach. That's not the point, though. The point is that Bakersfield's spectacular drabness forces fantasies like these. Death — or at least the romantic prospect of it — can seem preferable.

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.