Jimmy has never been the same since his wife died. He engages in a duel that affects him both in his work as a psychologist and in his relationship with his teenage daughter, whom his neighbor cares more about than he does. Ready to turn back, Jimmy makes a decision: He will become more involved in the lives of his patients and tell them what’s on his mind, even if it hurts. Among other things, he encourages a woman to end her marriage, welcomes a war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder to his home, and shows up in the middle of another of his patient appointments. His new attitude will change the lives of others and, over time, his as well. Apple TV+ this Friday premiered (two episodes in a row) Unfiltered Therapy, a dramatic comedy starring Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother), also a series co-creator.
The other two managers are Bill Lawrence, co-creator of Ted Lasso, and Brett Goldstein, actor and screenwriter of the award-winning series starring Jason Sudeikis. His new fiction inherits the combination of smiles and emotions that Ted Lasso handles so well and delves into sadness and sadness mixed with comedy in a way that more recent titles like After Life (Netflix) have also toured. “We wanted to write a series about grief because we’re in a world where everyone, at least marginally, has been dealing with some kind of grief or trauma in this post-pandemic world,” Bill Lawrence said in a video call in early December -Interview .
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Lawrence has several decades of experience in television comedy and is the creator of series such as Scrubs, Cougar Town or the aforementioned Ted Lasso. “I’ve always loved writing about things that are usually drama but with comedic undertones, because that’s how I approach everyday life and manage to deal with these things.” That mid-tone between the emotional and the comic was the main difficulty, that this series asked its authors. Brett Goldstein, who parks his acting side here (he has already won two Emmy Awards for his role as Roy Kent in Ted Lasso) to focus on his facets as a writer and producer, emphasizes this challenge: “You had to find the balance between to be funny enough and also very genuine and real, and that the emotional scenes didn’t make you so sad that you couldn’t laugh.” Co-star Neil Goldman, also screenwriter of Terapia sin filtro, agrees: ” The tone was the biggest challenge. The series may lean towards dramedy at first, but as time goes by and Jimmy starts to regain the light and his true personality, the series also becomes funnier and brighter. But it’s not linear, two steps back and forth, that’s how mourning works.”
Screenwriter Bill Lawrence at an event in Pasadena, California on January 18th. ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ (Getty Images via AFP)
Series like Terapia sin filtro aren’t afraid to touch on topics that until recently were taboo, and even more so through comedy. “The idea of destigmatizing therapy and self-care really excites me. It’s not the world I grew up in, but it’s very inspiring. It’s one of the things about the world today that I really find positive among so many negative things,” says Lawrence. The authors spoke to therapists to try to represent these issues as accurately as possible. “You’re dealing with a subject that isn’t a joke or nonsense,” explains Lawrence.
Harrison Ford in TV and comedy
One of the great claims of Therapy Without Filter is the presence of Harrison Ford in its cast. Whoever played such iconic characters as Indiana Jones or Han Solo is not a regular on television or in the comic book genre. At 80, he brings the protagonist’s co-worker and mentor to life in the series. “I still can’t figure out how we got him on our show,” says Bill Lawrence. “The best thing about a guy like Harrison Ford is that not only is he an icon and he has so much talent, but he’s also a gamer and loves new challenges. If someone had told me that we were going to send Harrison Ford a script where he doesn’t star, he doesn’t appear in all the scenes, and we asked him to do things he doesn’t normally do, and I was going to say yes , I wasn’t ready yet, I didn’t have my next sentence ready, I only had the answer when I said no.”
Harrison Ford plays Paul, a veteran psychologist in Unfiltered Therapy.
From pure comedy to traditional sitcom, Terapia sin filtro delves into a genre that has become very fashionable lately, the dramedy or tragicomedy. When asked whether pure and hard comedy is no longer an option, Brett Goldstein puts forward a theory: “I read an interview with the people responsible for the films Land as you can and Top Secret, both very, very funny, with millions of jokes and very silly. They said they realized that the reason Land Anywhere was so much more successful than Top Secret was because there was an inadvertent plot in the former, an emotional plot line that was something silly like, will the plane land? will you leave safely? There was viewer emotional involvement amidst all these silly gags, while Top Secret was a nonsensical story full of jokes. You can do pure comedy without emotion, but it doesn’t tend to stick with you.” For Bill Lawrence, the hardest part of the genre is making a comedy sound “emotionally authentic.” “That the stories don’t seem fake or anything , which couldn’t happen. The shows I don’t like are the ones I watch and say, ‘That’s not how a real person would handle this situation.’ One of the great things about Jason Sudeikis in Ted Lasso was that he knew from the start that he wanted people to think of Ted as a dope, a goofy American with a constant smile, but gradually realizing that he was a A lot of shit had him .his inside”.
The future of Ted Lasso
Before you wrap up the interviews, it’s inevitable to ask about Ted Lasso. “I have no idea why people connected so deeply to the show,” says Brett Goldstein, someone who’s the complete opposite of grumpy footballer Roy Kent on the show. “I have several theories. For one, I think that public discourse has become very awkward and we lived in a time where people were really mean to one another. A series where people have to face things but try to be kind and better was refreshing,” says the actor and screenwriter.
Jason Sudeikis and Brett Goldstein in the first season of Ted Lasso.
Ted Lasso’s future is still up in the air after season three begins this spring. Just in case, the team faced it like it was the last time. Lawrence explains that the decision to proceed is entirely up to Jason Sudeikis. “He is the creative engine in this series. I took care of her the first two years and he has been in charge in that third. This is Ted Lasso. The decision to continue or not is 100% his. I hope he does because I love these characters and the world he created and it’s a great show. But I’ll probably know the decision 10 minutes before you do. Jason has kids, he has to move to London to work every year… It will be a combination of creative reasons and what is right for his life. But we’ll find out soon enough,” concludes Lawrence.
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