Review: 'The Disappointments' Trades in Cheeky, Bleak Humor

Rich Burns writes, directs, and star in "The Disappointments," a short-form YouTube series that serves up cheeky gallows humor about gay male midlife and its discontents.

Ray (Burns) is a 50-ish, still-struggling screenwriter who's trying to move away from soul-crushing TV movie work and craft a personal masterpiece (a body-swapping comedy about two brothers, one gay and the other straight). Deep in debt, he's on the verge of putting his dreams on hold and taking a job... any job... in order to stay afloat. Dwight (Trevor LaPaglia), his boyfriend, is a couple of decades younger and already financially successful. With Dwight's house starting to undergo renovations, what could make more sense than for the two of them to share Ray's home and Dwight to foot the bills?

This romantic adjustment unfolds against a tragic backdrop, as Ray's ex, Keith, has just committed suicide. (Keith's self-centered friends, all of whom declined to help him, and whom Ray is left to contact, barely notice – outside of how the death inconveniences them, that is, or allows them to put on a show of grieving.)

Meantime, Ray's old friend Gary (Gedde Watanabe) is facing his own mortality as he privately deals with a life-altering medical issue. Stepping back momentarily from his sputtering acting career, Gary embraces spirituality – all kinds of spirituality, from the bible to Tibetan singing bowls.

Then there's James (James Campbell), whose acting career has, it seems, never taken off, leaving him to shill skin care products and compete with the same more-successful nemesis in a shrinking pool of opportunities for older performers.

Is life just passing these guys by? Or will they manage yet to grasp their middle years by the horns and wrest fulfillment from them?

Burns explores the letdowns and dogged hopes that tug at his characters, sometimes bolstering them and sometimes leading them to consider ditching their dreams. Is it ever too late to make good on your life goals? Or does there come a time when the only smart thing to do is chart a last-minute course correction? And what do you do if it might already be too late?

That's the thing about mid-life; you've only got so much time left. But then again, a glass half empty is also still half full.

The series offers decent writing and performances, and delivers technically with good sound and cinematography, which helps sell the sharp comic timing and the show's mix of defiant comedy and clammy dread. There's a slightly cartoonish aspect to the May/November romance between Ray and Dwight – the younger character is portrayed as needy and juvenile – but Ray's own residency in long-extended adolescence, and his everyman befuddlement, helps close that exaggerated gap somewhat, and his silver daddy physicality brings Murray Bartlett to mind.

LaPaglia, meantime, brings enough charm to his role that even when Dwight is doing something callow (like pissing in the sink), he's kind of sweet.

Campbell's excitable James is a character with thin, and very sensitive, skin, emotionally speaking. (Maybe that's why he started selling body care products?) Absolutely everything triggers his outrage and panic. It's a note he plays well, but it's still a single note, and it the series continues it would be nice to see him get more to do.

Watanabe is a standout as a man whose life isn't just half over, but might be about to cut into in the worst way possible. He strikes a winning balance between existential panic and deliberate, mindful poise. If there's a role model here, he's the one.

A kind of latter-day "Queer As Folk," with shades of the most recent iteration of "Tales of the City," the show sends up Hollywood and its denizens, and pokes fun at the terrors of gay middle age while making room for poignant moments. "The Disappointments" doesn't disappoint.

"The Disappointments" streams on YouTube starting Nov. 8.