Dice (2016)

With Dice, he's allowing himself to be flawed and fearful in a way that his stand-up comedy never could. Clay has remade his career and his persona for the better, handling the complexities with ease, and it's genuinely funny. There is still the same obsession with sex and, particularly, male genitalia as metaphor, but in a context that makes it somehow less toxic, more pathetic--"poignant" might even be the word.

It is brimming with weirdness--such as the Elvis impersonator who keeps following Dice like a bad-luck charm or guest star Adrien Brody mimicking Dice's mannerisms for a Method acting exercises--which bumps up against its ornery protagonist in funny ways. [15 Apr 2016, p.48]

The six episodes don't feature enough laughs to rank it among the essential comedies, even if the writing in specifics is pretty solid. A handful of jokes land every episode. Few miss. The tone is consistently light.

The show works better when Dice is in sitcom mode, rather than trying to stretch his dramatic chops.

Overall, Dice may not be a groundbreaking piece of television, but it does feel in many ways like a culmination for Clay’s career.

What is missing from Dice is more of these scenes, more moments where its clear that Clay isn’t the alpha-male vulgarian that he’s been playing on stage and on screen for most of his career. There’s not enough challenging of his machismo, outside of the age-old routine of Carmen being the sensible one and he being the foolish male, but that hardly counts as a moment of genuine reflection on the comedian’s part.

It has its moments. It just needs a few more of them.

An episode featuring Criss Angel, the “Mindfreak” illusionist, is also quite funny, and practically every installment is enlivened with attention-getting guest stars from the Las Vegas scene. But the series, created by Scot Armstrong, invests an awful lot in the comedic value of crassness, and the result is only a 50-50 success rate.

Strengthen or ditch most of the supporting cast (and go “Louie”-style with a rotating ensemble) and Dice could become something really special. As is, it’s still an interesting chapter in a return of a once-superstar that most of us never saw coming.

Dice is mostly a warmed-over attempt to ape Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” with just a dose of the existential despair seen in Louis C.K.’s “Louie.”

Clay's entry is far from the bottom of this burgeoning genre's particular barrel--Hello, Donny!--and the debut season of Dice actually has some highlights, including a very funny second episode built around an inspired cameo by Adrien Brody, but general unevenness pervades.

Dice has its moments of levity but struggles to maintain a regular comedic pace.

The show has its moments, spread over six episodes, but as showbiz perches goes, this one is hardly the top of the world, ma.

The show is bad, the star a bit sad, his shtick as old as a rock.