Critic Reviews

Maron, 49, seems to be effortlessly gliding through his angst, laughing only rarely while giving viewers far more reason to do so.

The fourth season effectively channels the raw vitality of WTF’s early days, when Maron was trying to dig his way out of a hole by embracing the world around him instead of pushing it away.

There’s still a little roughness around the edges of the series.... Nevertheless, Maron operates on its own frequency and works within its own rhythms.

This theoretically grim material [addiction], but the real-life Maron transmutes it into gold. [6 May 2016, p.51]

The results are two episodes that feel tonally right in line with their predecessors, but fresher to the TV landscape. They're not particularly funny, nor are they all that insightful, but they do give us an honest character study unlike any other.

It takes what's great about the WTF podcast--Maron's smarts, his profound love of and understanding of comedy and the people who perform it--and adds a scripted, fictional element where Sally Kellerman can play his mother and Judd Hirsch can play his father and a bevy of real-life comics and friends can stop by to mingle the two worlds and it all works out marvelously and hilariously.

Maron is short, funny and coherent.

Maron may not have the depth and adventurousness of “Louie” or the crude energy of Jim Jefferies’s “Legit,” but it’s consistently well written (or improvised) and smartly cast.

Maron is at its greatest when the comedian plays into the abrasiveness that lands him in trouble with others.

Maron may not delve that deeply [into substance abuse]--by Episode 2 of the new season, Marc is showing signs that he’s the same irksome guy in rehab that he was before. But if nothing else, the premiere does effectively, yet comedically, show two truths of substance abuse: Addicts need enablers who fuel their problem, either deliberately or inadvertently, and most need someone to intervene to help them climb out of the pit.