Better late than never, here’s my take on the “Bored to Death” season finale. I’d guess I have all the time in the world, because HBO rarely sticks to any sort of schedule (unless it’s an aggressive one with a true hit like “Entourage” early on), so I wouldn’t expect new episodes of BTD for at least 12-18 months.

Either way, things ended with a bang, or rather, a punch, as the boxing match among writers and editors promised in the seventh episode was held in this, the eighth. Things began with another stunt casting, as the annoying Sarah Vowell dialed things down enough to be practically anonymous as someone interviewing George, Jonathan and Ray and their opponents from GQ (and book critic John Hodgman) about the pending bout.

There isn’t much of a case for Jonathan. The only one comes when someone calls him and tells him to throw the fight or they’ll expose George’s Viagra prescription. Jonathan gets the guy’s number from his caller ID, searches a reverse directory and goes to take back the evidence from someone who is even more a milquetoast than he is.

The focus is, rightly so, on the fight. Ray opens by fighting the cartoonist from GQ, a big fan who nevertheless, and much to his horror, knocks Ray down with his first punch. Jonathan is next, and he gives Hodgman a sound beating. In a funny exchange during which Hodgman’s goading seems to energize Jonathan, Hodgman, on the mat after being punched, responds to Jonathan’s declaration that the Times gave him a good review, by saying, “I didn’t know the Times liked your work. I must have missed that,” before passing out.

Jonathan wasn’t the only one to take a dive. George is asked by his ex-wife (and current wife of his opponent, GQ editor Richard Antrem, to take a dive. It seems Antrem has a bad heart and shouldn’t fight. George sees her in the front row and decides to do just that, letting Antrem knock him down. There are tender scenes between Ted Danson’s George and his ex before the fight, and a nice moment between Danson and Jason Schwartzman’s Jonathan after. These give some real depth to the characters, that are good to see.

So, in closing, “Bored to Death” was nothing like I expected, but that’s not all bad. I still feel the premise of a struggling writer trying to be a private detective could be more fully explored, but the interplay among the characters and the genuinely funny writing by Jonathan Ames make me willing to be patient and wait for those moments when they come.

Best lines:

GQ cartoonist to Vowell’s reporter before the fight: “I’ve never practiced S&M, but I’ve always wanted to, and this seems like a good opportunity.”

Ray: I’m going to do the old Rope-a-Dope, just like Will Smith in ‘Ali.” I watched that last night.
George: You mean like Ali.
Ray: I didn’t see Ali, I saw Will Smith.

With the penultimate episode of “Bored to Death”‘s debut season, the show seems to have reached a nice equilibrium, with the characters and premise established. That makes it easier to watch, but it means challenges for next season (HBO picked it up for a second year weeks ago). How to keep it fresh, particularly as Jonathan and his ex grow further apart and the foibles that caused trouble this season have faded?

In this episode, Jonathan’s case hits close to home: It seems the lesbians that had been getting Ray’s sperm in the hopes of having a baby have actually been selling it to other lesbian couples. Jonathan and Ray stumble on this after Ray gets worried over the lack of contact from the couple. The search leads the two into some interesting scenes, including one with a food co-op girl who smokes pot with them in exchange for sharing information, an encounter with Hasidic Jews and another with Jonathan’s ex.

George takes a back seat for much of the show, but it closes strong, with a proposed boxing match between George and his magazine publishing nemesis (played by Oliver Platt). Jonathan and a book critic who savaged his first novel (played by John Hodgman) want to get in on it as well. The challenge was a cliffhanger, which will lead to the big match this Sunday.

Jonathan’s writing is discussed briefly. He has one sentence written (that he doesn’t like) when Ray asks him to help find the lesbians. He also discusses the book with his agent, who sheds more light on the fact that it is a “comedy about one man’s journey through the Kama Sutra.”

This week’s stunt casting was Samantha Bee from “The Daily Show,” who played one of the lesbians.

Best lines:

Food co-op girl to Jonathan: “I just ordered this vaporizer called the Volcano. They use it on cancer patients in Germany. It’s very healthy. It’s what Woody Harrelson uses.”

Jonathan to his ex, who was walking a new dog: “You replaced me with a little white dog named Phillip? But you could have held on to me. I’m not neutered. I don’t beg for food. I don’t need to be walked.”

Week 6 of “Bored to Death” felt like it should have come much earlier in the season thanks to the significant backstory dropped into the plot. it was funny, again focusing most of its attention on George and Ray, allowing the two to interact for the first time as they were brought together on one of Jonathan’s cases.

It begins promising, with Ray pulling up outside a diner in his Subaru Outback, discharging passenger Jonathan, who emerges in a trench coat and sunglasses. He enters the diner to some pleasingly “Shaft”-like music, setting a nice tone… that is essentially dropped for the rest of the episode. The case: a nebbish cheated with a woman who videotaped the session and is now blackmailing him. Jonathan promises to get the tapes.

We get the most extensive look yet at the offices of EditionNY, the magazine edited by George for which Jonathan freelances. He stops in to pick up a galley of a new Paul Auster novel (yet another nod to the quintessential New Yorkness of the show), and finds George lamenting an invitation to a party for Gay Talese. Jonathan declines an invitation to join him, telling George about his case (George being the last core character to be let in on the secret). He tells George he has set up a sting by posing as a married man looking for a rendezvous with the woman, and George, the character most “bored to death” in the show, asks to tag along. He and Ray talk shop and smoke pot while waiting in the car for Jonathan, missing all of the action. They fill each other in on their respectively lives, giving viewers more backstory in the process.

Things go wrong, of course, and Jonathan ends up at the blackmailer’s house, confronting her and her brother. Left weaponless but wanting to help, Ray arms himself with a snow brush, while George grabs a toy stick horse named Janet from Ray’s backseat. The image of Ted Danson as George running toward the house, cocking the horse like a rifle, is priceless.

As has been the case with most of Jonathan’s other encounters, the “bad guys” here are just trying to do the right thing but have taken a wrong step in trying to make that happen. That fits with Jonathan’s M.O. — despite his sometimes selfish nature, he is really just a misguided misfit whose attempts to do right are foiled by his own foibles. That, of course, undercuts the so-called “noir” in the show, but the sweetness, in its own way, redeems the show, too.

By the way, this week’s stunt casting was Patton Oswalt as the manager of a spy stuff store.

Best lines:

George, when told Ray will drive asks, “Is it a good car?” Ray responds, “it’s a Subaru.” George then asks Jonathan as they walk away, “What’s a Subaru?”

Ray: “There’s nothing wrong with failure. I do it all the time.”

Last night’s “Bored to Death” was the weakest of the bunch so far, really nothing more than an extended joke about skateboard punks and an excuse to get a couple of costars on the screen. While things returned to the struggling-writer-as-PI theme, I would have willingly traded that for a story that didn’t feel like it ran out rather than ended.

Jonathan’s case is to find a missing skateboard. It was stolen from the 9-year-old son of Parker Posey’s radical vegan single mom. Jonathan is put onto the case by Ray’s girlfriend, who mentions it amid a rather tense visit from the lesbian couple that wants Ray’s sperm for an artificial insemination. (see last week’s wrap-up for details). This scene, which yields a few laughs at Ray’s expense, proves that the characters around Jonathan provide much more satisfaction than the star of the show.

Jonathan falls for Posey and decides to take the case for free. He must pursue an “alpha male” 16-year-old who stole the skateboard from Posey’s kid. That’s it. He asks around, finds the kid, is rebuffed and then conspires with Ray to steal the skateboard. Jonathan’s best scene follows, as he sits on the skateboard to ride it down a hill, the skateboard kids in pursuit. The scene is reminiscent, coincidentally enough, of the Hummer ad that was inspired by “Rushmore.”

Meanwhile, Jonathan’s boss, the magazine editor George, falls for a young woman because he has developed an obsession with the female armpit. He tells Jonathan he saw the blonde hairs of an organic-restaurant owner glowing in the sunlight, and he was hooked. He and Jonathan go to the restaurant for an event. George is so worried about fitting in with the young crowd that he dons a beret. Luckily, Jonathan nixes that idea. They get to the restaurant and the main joke is that the girl’s armpits are filled with a thick thatch of hair. Things come full circle, however, as the skateboard kids find Jonathan and ruin the event.

Jonathan returns the skateboard, but is of course rebuffed by Posey. Jonathan can’t find love four episodes into the season, and Posey wouldn’t do more than one cameo, so that was a given.

One more cameo that seems as if it has legs: Bebe Neuwirth, Ted Danson’s “Cheers” castmate, appears as Jonathan’s editor or agent. We learn for the first time that Jonathan’s long-gestating second novel is a “Kama Sutra novel” and he’s not very far along.

The whole thing felt incomplete, more like a handful of disparate scenes than a coherent narrative.

Best lines

Ray (talking about his girlfriend’s kids): “Those kids call me fat and hairy. They could stand to lose a few pounds themselves.”

George, (after smoking pot with Jonathan): “Are we too stoned? My feet feel really interesting in my shoes.”

Jonathan (to Posey’s radical vegan): “In my heart I’m a vegan, but in my mouth I lack discipline.”

“Bored to Death” seems to be hitting its stride, and it does so with an episode that makes only glancing mention of Jonathan’s private eye work. Instead, this is a showcase for Ray (Zach Galifianakis) and George (Ted Danson).

Though the show is billed as a “noir-otic comedy,” I had hoped for more noir than comedy. Sunday, it was all comedy and no noir. While the premise of the show has heart-broken writer Jonathan Ames posting an ad on Craigslist offering his services as a private detective, episode 3 finds Jonathan considering an offer to punch up a script from Jim Jarmusch. In some ways, it felt like a stunt-cast cameo around which the entire episode was written. OK, who am I kidding; that’s exactly what it felt like. Still, Jarmusch was suitably Jarmusch-like (his closing scene riding a kid’s bike in circles around a vacant loft was so absurd it moved past cheesy and back to funny), and Jonathan’s episode-long quest to retrieve a misplaced script led to some of the episode’s funniest moments.

To recap, George, Jonathan’s magazine editor, takes him to a party to meet Jarmusch. The filmmaker liked Jonathan’s first novel, and wants him to work on a screenplay. Jarmusch has one great line, telling Jonathan, “You must really suffer from the terrifying clarity of your vision,” and gives Jonathan a script. He misplaces it while making out with an underage Jarmusch fan, who happens to be the daughter of a therapist. Luckily, Ray, Jonathan’s best friend and a cartoonist, had promised his girlfriend that in exchange for sex, he would go to therapy. That opens the door for Jonathan to get his script back, but ultimately, he must retrieve it himself.

The scenes with the therapist (Denis O’Hare), both on screen and off, were highlights. He so “eviscerated” Ray at his session that he not only forgot to get the script, but wandered away from the appointment blubbering about needing a long list of comfort items (beer, vodka, comic books, etc.) to cope. Later, when his girlfriend comes to make good on her end of the sex-for-therapy agreement, he tells her he can’t. “When I was a little kid, I used to push my penis in to make it look like it disappeared. Today, it happened all by itself.”

Meanwhile, the therapist dismisses all of Jonathan’s problems (writer’s block, etc.) and offers this zinger: “Lives don’t change. We simply become more comfortable with our core misery, which is a form of happiness.”

I haven’t mentioned Jason Schwartzman yet because, while he’s on screen nearly the entire time, Jonathan was such a straight man here that he threatened to disappear. Either Schwartzman is just that good, disappearing into the role and the story, or the real Jonathan Ames, who wrote the teleplay, has found it easier to give meaty parts to everyone but his own character.

One last note: An oddly well-timed reference to Roman Polanski by George came when Jonathan said the girl he had made out with was 16: “Polanski was much worse,” he says. It is as if Ames knew the director would be back in the news.

Best lines:

Ray (discussing with his girlfriend a request by fans for him to donate sperm: “But it’s flattering. They’re fans of my work. I’ve never had lesbian fans before.”

Jonathan: Movies equal money, women, glamor, more women.

Jonathan: I wish I would have met you in high school.
Underage girl: I wouldn’t have liked you then.
Jonathan: That’s true.

George (watching a naked girl walk back to his bedroom): She makes me feel like I’m 50 again.

The new HBO series “Bored to Death” wants to be a lot of things. Only time will tell if it pulls all of this off, but the first episode is certainly promising, and much of that promise comes in the form of the three leads.

Here’s the setup: Writer Jonathan Ames is trying to follow up his debut novel, but can’t seem to get going. His girlfriend leaves him in the opening moments of the first episode in part because he drinks too much and smokes too much pot. A chance encounter with Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely (it was in one of the many stacks of books that seem to be the only thing left in his apartment after his girlfriend takes all of her stuff) leads him to list his services on Craigslist as a private detective. He gets his first case soon thereafter, and we’re off.

Here on TIRBD each week, I’ll dissect the new episode with commentary, criticism and a recap.

So, back to that name. Yes, this Jonathan Ames is that Jonathan Ames. Well, sort of. In a bit of confusing meta-fiction, the real writer Jonathan Ames found himself in somewhat similar circumstances at one point, but rather than advertise himself as a PI, he write a story called “Bored to Death” in which a writer named Jonathan Ames does so (you can find it in McSweeney’s 24 (which also features some great Donald Barthelme-related content) or in Ames’ new collection, The Double Life is Twice as Good. Confused? Five minutes into the first episode, you won’t be. The conceit of Ames writing about Ames goes away because the persona has been placed the capable hands (body?) of Jason Schwartzman.

Schwartzman, still best known as Max from “Rushmore,” seems finally to have found another role worthy of his talents. As Ames, he is funny, earnest, sweet, romantic (in all senses of the word) and just naive enough to think he can pull this off. By day he is a struggling novelist and magazine writer. His editor is the very funny Ted Danson. Ames (the real Ames, that is), says he wrote the character of George Christopher to be a sort of Christopher Hitchens-George Plimpton hybrid. For those of us in flyover states who know these men by their writing more than their personalities, that matters little. What we have in George is a guy who best typifies the show title: He is rich, successful and bored to death. His role seems to be as a sort of reverse mentor who wants to live vicariously through Jonathan’s exploits. Oh, and he likes to smoke pot. A lot. The type of magazine isn’t explained in the opening, though Ames’ assignment to interview people at a gallery opening makes one think of New York or some such society rag.

Jonathan’s best friend is Ray Hueston, a web comic artist based on Ames’ real-life friend and collaborator Dean Haspiel (the two created The Alcoholic, Ames’ graphic novel from earlier this year). As a nice touch, Haspiel is creating all of Ray’s comic art shown on the show. Ray, too, is bored, craving sex from a girlfriend who is too tired from her job and kids to satisfy him. Played by Zach Galifianakis, he’s a wiseass with issues. With Schwartzman playing more of a straight man, it seems Galifianakis and Danson will fight each week to see who can deliver the best zingers. These two are as well-cast as Schwartzman, and the chemistry among these three, already evident, will ultimately drive this show.

So, back to that original thought: the many things this show hopes to be. It’s obviously a comedy first and foremost. But it also has significant dramatic elements, dealing with notions of male arrested development, the ennui of the upper class and, if one stretches, the way communication is affected by technology (is this the first Craigslist-driven show?). Beyond that, there is the crime/noir element. Ames’ case in this first episode, a missing persons’ quest of a sort, is more about introducing us to the PI’s quirks than about finding someone, so it remains to be seen how much of the writer Ames’ affinity for noir and detective fiction (he claims to have come upon the idea while reading noir giant David Goodis) shines through. This is billed as a “noir-otic comedy;” we got comedy and neurotic behavior in the first episode. Let’s see what they do about “noir” from here on out.

There is much fodder in the depiction of a modern guy modeling his PI actions on those of the pulp heroes of the 40s and 50s. That is explored briefly here when Jonathan is admonished by a cop to stop what he’s doing. Here’s hoping there is much more where that came from.

Lastly, the theme song, “Bored to Death,” was written by Schwartzman and Ames and recorded by Schwartzman under his nom du rock, Coconut Records.

Best lines:

Girlfriend: I told you months ago that if we were going to make this work you had to stop drinking and smoking pot, and you didn’t.
Jonathan: It’s dangerous to go cold turkey. I’m down to white wine.

George: Men face reality; women don’t. That’s why we need to drink.

Ray (outside a coffee shop, to Jonathan): Some early-morning post-natal yoga class exploded. It’s like a nursery in there.