Kidding

If Season 1 was a pressure cooker, Season 2 is more of a spiral. Everyone in Jeff's immediate circle has to face up to their sins, and even if some fare better than others, the collective reckoning makes a hell of a mess to clean up.

Showtime's best and most binge-worthy series in a long time. ... The result is funny, wildly inventive and utterly sad. To pull off what is conceptually the implosion of Mister Rogers is a real triumph.

The personal toll the demand of celebrity takes on someone desperate for real connection. An audience’s insistence that the connection they have to someone on TV is real, and can’t be shattered. They are provocative, meta conversations raised especially by having Carrey in this role, and they elevate the show even as its quirkier dramedy subthreads begin to run amok.

Kidding is melancholy more often than laugh-out-loud funny, and well-acted even if some of its character development is lacking. More than anything else, it’s a showcase for Carrey.

Directed by Michel Gondry, Kidding occasionally shows sparks of the magic he brought to his previous collaboration with Mr. Carrey, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” but there’s not enough of the show-within-a-show for Mr. Gondry’s wonderfully wacko visual style to get much play.

Through the first two episodes, Kidding has the slightly whimsical but basically naturalistic vibe of an indie family drama. ... When the series turns to Sebastian, a cold and implausible father, and his plotting, it feels as though Kidding is not quite confident that its two elegiac central questions--how to be sad and how to be good--are interesting enough. If the show could make itself comfortable with Mr. Pickles’ gloom, they could be.

None of this plays as interesting or funny as it sounds on the printed page. Carrey's Mr. Pickles is tortuously unappealing, a smiley-faced drip in need of a hard slapping. And Mr. Pickles' Puppet Time itself is on the screen, it's light years past unbearable.

This is a great show. It’s funny, sad, quirky, thoughtful and memorable. Great acting by the adults and kids and nobody is annoying. I wish I could watch it for 5 or 6 seasons and call it a classic I hope showtime keeps it going.

Jim Carrey and Michel Gondry really delivered on this one. If you loved Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 20 years ago, this is the team that made it. Kidding is in my top 5 shows for 2019, one of the best years of tv shows ever. Btw, my #1 show this year is The Boys

Jim Carrey is the main reason that makes this show a real good entertainment. In my view, this was the best comedy TV show of 2018.