Web Therapy

One has to be, I think, a particularly gifted comedian to adopt an unlikable, mostly unsympathetic character and still create good comedy. Few have that skill, and Lisa Kudrow (the one-hit wonder from that cheese ball "comedy" aimed at teenage girls known as Friends) has none of it.

This is why her show is on Showtime (the HBO for the simple minded, the unemployed, and the farm belt). But even with that easy-to-please audience, there is a snowball's chance in hell that this exercise in comedic mediocrity will be "rewarded" with a second season.

The premise, along with the title, seems to represent a desperate attempt to attach itself to the "hip new worldwide web," no doubt in response to Showtime's understanding of the fact that its subscribers would rather watch cat videos on YouTube, than to watch its low- budgeted, poorly written, and inevitably predictable programming.

My advice to Lisa is that she fall in love with a vampire before Showtime's viewers realize that their money is better spent on a web cam of their own.

Lisa Kudrow is the Lucille Ball of our time. Unusual, distinctive, unafraid.

This show, which I only heard of last October (2011), is remarkable comedy.

Comedy is the art of making the unexpected hilarious. That's what this show does. In each episode, the premise is usually straightforward. Each time Fiona begins a session, we have immediate clarity on what the problem is. Hilarity then ensues, taking unexpected turn after unexpected turn - some cued by Kudrow's priceless brand of facial exasperation, others cued by some astonishing new fact that visibly upsets or enrages her.

I remember reading a take on I Love Lucy. Desi Arnaz explained that every episode opened with a perfectly common home-life dilemma. As fans know, nothing past that premise was ever common. Each week, Lucy made us believe that she's the housewife with X problem which, if solved, will change her life. All the better if the dilemma was posed by a possible show-biz break.

Cue Lisa K and the Lucy Ricardo'ish character Fiona. She is ambitious. The Internet is her show-biz - she always wants to break into it in a big way. She has an appalling lack of common sense. Kip has problems we could imagine Ricky having if he was a lead singer and star today.

In the end, both Lucy R. and Fiona W. are screwball characters whose humanity is immediately on display but who are tempted into vanity, errant ambition, and ill-fated schemes.

Web Therapy is comedy art. Hilarity at its zenith. I tell everyone I know to Watch This Show!

Lisa Kudrow is perfectly cast! The scripts are fresh and timeless. And at the time (pre-pandemic) the idea of going online to speak to a professional was considered absurd.

Supporting cast, especially her husband and Mother (Lily Tomlin) are unforgettable.

It's the kind of show that's worth revisiting, as it's impossible to remember all the lines of the script that hit true!!!

Highly recommend. And if you disagree with this review, you need therapy!!!

Seems that Lisa has a natural interest for realistic comic situations. The Comeback (2005) was a mockumentary about an actress trying to resuscitate a 15 years long dead career. Lisa made of Valerie Cherish a remarkable original character in a show of outstanding quality and mesmerizing performance, giving a huge step forward in comedy and leaving behind very silly things that people were used to laugh of. In other words, "The Comeback" was an extremely intelligent and brilliant series that her fans and also smart comedy show fans are missing a lot.

After the storm of positive reviews received about her last show she's back again with another very interesting and smart idea. Web Therapy (2008) is a web series that debuted on Lexus' broadband channel L Studio and is directed by Kudrow's long time collaborator Don Roos - The Opposite Of Sex (1998), Happy Endings (2005). The series and all its episodes can be seen with no sign-ups or PayPal.

Web Therapy follows some of the same steps of her last show, it plays with some real figures, deals with facts in realistic tones and also there's this character that's a lot different from Valerie but can also be a lot pathetic. She's Dr. Fiona Wallice, the psychotherapist of unreliable quality that believes that 50 minutes sessions is too much of talk, while weekly 3 minutes sessions can make patients cut right to the point making therapy sessions effective. Besides her uncommon and completely surrealistic kind of therapy she's also not a good listener, interrupting sessions mostly for self judgements, giving personal and unnecessary quotes or even trying to use her patients to promote her "new modality" of therapy. A lot impolite and unprofessional situations, but extremely hilarious. It's some kind of a twisted In Treatment (2008).

Lisa performs it perfectly as always, and also her guests, mainly because the invited actors - and also Lisa - are improvising all the time. Do not expect hours of entertainment because the episodes are too short and it happens as fast as Fiona's therapy sessions but there's enough for loud laughs. Dr. Wallice is rude, indelicate and inpatient, the worst therapist you could ever met. Like "The Comeback" it's all about intelligent dialogs and uncommon situations, so don't go expecting that automatic thing of 'sit- watch-laugh', it's a show that asks for appreciation because it's one of the most refined things in comedy that you can expect if you are someone really interested about new experiences in comedy shows.

After 3 years the show debuted at Showtime and people need to recognize Lisa's talent not only as an actress but also as an amazing creative artist. No doubt, Dr. Fiona Wallice is another original, remarkable and brilliant character created and performed by Lisa.

First of all. I love Lisa Kudrow. She is brilliant in everything she is in. That doesn't mean I like everything she is in. In Friends she played a quirky but likeable character. Unfortunately, in Web Therapy, her character is annoying, self-righteous, totally self-unaware, and outright mean. I could barely get through the first episode. Yes, you can compare her to Larry David, but only because both seem to have settled on cringe comedy as their only creative outlet.

Comedy is supposed to make you laugh. Instead of watching Web Therapy just listen to two minutes of fingernails scraping on a blackboard. It's just as irritating and you'll save yourself 24 minutes. Lisa Kudrow deserves so much better than this mess.