Eastbound & Down

The jokes take of on all sorts of unexpected trajectories--foul balls that score. [12 Mar 2012, p.45]

What lifts Eastbound & Down away from mere crudball humor is McBride's ongoing love affair with the lower middle class.

McBride celebrates the Southern-fried dirtball culture of flyover America like some "Red State Diaries"; it's a veritable HBO "Hee-Haw."

I tend to judge a show's worth on whether I'll come back for more; I've already watched next week's episode of "Eastbound and Down," and I'll definitely be watching to see where Kenny's Mexican journey takes him.

Strangely, the fourth season of Eastbound & Down exudes a somber tone that flies in the face of the show's typically rambunctious tendencies. Kenny is crankier than in the past, and his staunchly vexed attitude throws the proceedings a bit off balance.

Drugs. Pratfalls. Bodily excretions. Sexual crudity. Shock-jock ethnic humor. Four-letter words flying like lead in a matineee Western. Character development and story? Not so much.

It seems like a middling Fox series with a monotonous glut of obscenities and some nudity tossed in to make it pay-cable worthy.