Blunt Talk is vulgar, crude, and always goes for the cheap laugh. Considering Seth MacFarlane executive produces the show, it should come as no surprise. However, Blunt Talk is better than Family Guy. Patrick Stewart, who plays Walter Blunt, manages to single-handedly make the show appeal to more than just 13-year-old boys and those who are 13-year-old boys at heart.
Walter Blunt’s actions make the cast of Jersey Shore look demure. The man considers alcohol his medicine, does almost every illegal drug on Earth, and doesn’t understand why getting caught with a transgender prostitute has to be career threatening. Amazingly, Blunt’s actions aren’t career ending because he bribes his boss, who should have realized that putting a crazy man on in prime time is ratings gold. They work for a company named UBS and Walter Blunt is going off the rails. Not only Howard Beale should exist in this universe, he should be a patron saint.
When Walter Blunt isn’t pretending to be an underappreciated newsman, he’s pathetic and needy. He likes to spoon with his right hand woman, Rosalie Winter (Jacki Weaver), and needs his valet Harry Chandler (Adrian Scarborough) to read him to bed each night. Whenever someone is treating Blunt like a child, the show goes from funny to cringeworthy. Those moments make Patrick Stewart’s decision to star in this show extremely questionable. Out of control fictional alcoholic that may bring down a network: hilarious. Out of control alcoholic who needs his mommy: sad.
Blunt Talk is a mixed bag. The novelty of Patrick Stewart cursing and boozing it up wears thin halfway through the second episode. The writers need to make Walter Blunt less pathetic and more in control of his world. Keeping Blunt as an unstable person, who desperately needs rehab and thinks that airing an exclusive interview with himself using a split screen is not crazy, will become uninteresting fast.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Blunt Talk airs Saturday nights on Starz.
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Allison Lips is the Founder of Wait! What’s a Dial?, a television blog that showcases the writing of millennials. Allison graduated from Rowan University in May 2013. She has a passion for TV history, especially late night and game shows. If she could go back in time, Steve Allen would still be hosting The Tonight Show. Follow her on Twitter @waitwaitsadial.
