Bookie (series): A reasonably good comedy that doesn't take too long

The title kind of says it all. Sometimes I am in the mood for a comedy that doesn't have a laugh track and focuses on something different and I also want the episodes to be over in 22 minutes which is quite standard for shows that were designed to be marketed to multiple platforms or streaming providers. At the moment this is an HBO Max but the 22-minute runtime per episode indicates that it later might be ported to other avenues, perhaps even network TV if anyone still watches that.

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Danny and Ray are the heads of an illegal sports betting enterprize based in California and even though they are a rough and tumble type of duo, as they get older they have a lot of empathy towards people who owe them money on bad bets and try to help them out with ways to pay rather than stopping by and breaking their legs. This is where the humor originates because they have to maintain a façade of being tough guys that are going to hurt you if you don't pay while at the same time really being dedicated to not doing so.

This can prove quite tough to pull off because of the people don't believe that there are consequences for not paying, then there isn't much inclination for them to pay.

One thing that kind of annoyed me was that this show was advertised as though it was a "burying of the hatchet" between Producer Chuck Lorre and Charlie Sheen who you might recall had a major falling out when Lorre fired Sheen from the hit show that I never watched called "Two and a half Men." The way the trailers operated was attempting to convince us that Sheen was going to be a major character in this.

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It kind of annoyed me when Sheen was presented in the first episode and is in something like 90 seconds of the overall episode, and then he is never in any of it again. Perhaps once the ratings start to drop they will bring him back in. I have no idea.

This show seems to be one of those typical shows where there are a ton of cameos by various celebrities and this is easy to pull off because the show is meant to take place in California, which is where all of these stars would live anyway. It's a formula that will work, because they can always throw in more and more people that you wouldn't expect to see in a sitcom to keep the fans happy.

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I was quite happy to see Jorge Garcia get included as a major character and his introduction to the "crew" is nicely done as it is a complete accident. He just happens to be the Lyft driver for Danny and Ray when their car, which they accepted as a trade on a gabling debt, gets repossessed while they are out trying to collect money.

Garcia plays Hector, who introduces the duo so Spanish-speaking customers betting on football or as the Americans call it, soccer.

I like Garcia from that show you might have heard of called LOST and unless something has been happening that I simply didn't notice, he hasn't done a whole hell of a lot since then. He adds some fresh comedy to the duo because while he has the appearance of someone who is a complete coward, he is actually the most hardcore out of all of them.

Something that I enjoyed about the show was the cameos, but it also kind of annoys me because we are sold the series in the trailers by showcasing these people such as Ray Romano, who also worked for Lorre in the past with Everyone loves Raymond. I guess Lorre has a lot of pull in the industry and is able to get someone to come in for a day's work, but then they don't want to stick around to actually be part of the story. There is only one season right now so I suppose they could always be intertwined into the story again later.

As a sitcom, this story doesn't really have a true trajectory as to where an overall plot might be going and I think this is by design so that they can keep this going for as long or as short a time as the market dictates. It's a good strategy from a marketing and money-making standpoint is concerned, but it can be a bit of a letdown if we are looking for some great character arcs because they simply aren't going to happen.

Should I watch it?

The upside of this show is that you don't really need to pay close attention to it because it is not an intellectual show at all. The fact that the episodes are short and things keep moving is also a plus. There is no time wasting going on here in order to fill a pre-determined number of episodes, or so it seems.

The downside is that there really isn't any sort of overall story here and the individual episodes aren't really connected to one another outside of some minor details. This is extremely common in sitcoms though, so perhaps many people wouldn't even notice this.

I can't say that I loved this, but it is decent easy watching.

_{currently, the only legal way to watch this is through an HBO Max / Max streaming subscription}