2 out of 5

Created by: Alan Spencer

This is so close to being one star it almost hurts to give it two… but I have to allow credit for some chuckles once I could swallow the oddly-shaped pill Spencer unleashed here, as well acknowledgment for spinning up an action version of the serious/silly Apatow comedy formula, with a further bent toward the somewhat surreal.

So annoying criminal Gunter (and he’s supposed to be annoying, which is another odd pill) is all evil and ripped and after being tasked by mob boss Eddie Izzard to shoot his equally evil girlfriend, Martine, he gets caught up in a funky double cross where Martine shoots him in the face, and ends up shooting and killing a blond, pretty-faced cop in the scuffle.  He wakes up after ‘facial reconstruction’ and he’s now wearing the cops’ face (both played by Max Williams, so the only really required change is some hair styling and lack of a wig), as devised by commissioner Eva in order to take advantage of Gunter’s criminal knowledge to infiltrate Izzard and rival boss Eric Robert’s worlds, on the spin that Gunter would want revenge and that he’ll get his own face back as a reward.  It’s a purposefully silly plot, but it’s telling of one of the main polarizing constants of Spencer’s creation – the balance of humor.  This is parody of action / cop drama, for sure, but it’s presented with some level of dramatics and not quite either the Naked Gun level of innocence or the more modern “I’m so aware of how silly this is that I’ll confront it for the viewer, constantly” spin.  I’m thankful it wasn’t the latter, since I find that style of humor gratingly stupid, but the half-in, half-out maybe-we’re-winking style is hard to deal with for most of the series.  Gunter is paired with the cop’s ex-partner, Lieutenant Hagerman, and his sensitivity and stupidity and homo-erotically charged relationship with the man whose face Gunter now wears is all milked for many gags, and Hagerman, as played by Neil Napier, is probably one of the highlights of the series – along with Izzard and Roberts – as they all get to play the most direct parodies of roles, without all the flip-flopping.

It’s been a longass time since I watched Sledge Hammer (though I’ll be returning to it soon), and I do recall a tonal mixing there as well, with more actual action than Naked Gun, but I seem to remember David Rasche giving the role a bit more naivety, which influenced the series in general.  With Gunter as our lead – and Williams does a good job with it, with a way over the top accent and flippant attitude and quick verbal gags with mispronunciations – the show requires some investment in the vibe to sit through, as the character just isn’t the dude you want to follow because of how annoying he is… but then again, there’s not really an ace in the deck here.  You don’t like any of these characters.  Spencer’s attempt to lampoon a genre X’d out a need to include a reason for someone to watch, so it seemed like he tried to substitute some actual plot as a device for roping us back in, but it’s all forged on top of such foolishness and loud and garish bombast that you’ll be lucky to get through one episode without hating everyone involved.  I had to restart the series with an open mind after a few episodes soured my opinion, and past the clumsy intro episode (Gunter’s cartoonish viciousness is painted with too much red to give it the Looney Tunes’ feel of how I recall Sledge’s violence, so you have to get used to that too), the series finds an actual okay beat for a minute, with Gunter playing cop and helping to solve some crimes.  But then we get back to the ‘who cares’ rest of the story.

Whatever.  I think ‘Bullet in the Face’ looks and sounds like a good idea, and many of us (maybe) have good memories of ‘Sledge Hammer’ to bring us in.  But maybe ‘Sledge’ wasn’t actually that great; or, in trying to ‘modernize’ his style and flip his focus to a villain, Spencer executes classic overkill and creates an entirely unnatural vibe that gives us no reason to really watch unless we just want to see if it gets better.  It doesn’t.  Some chuckles, and if you step back and try to watch it as.. I dunno, a concept – one big joke and not as something where you’re supposed to actually be interested in anything that goes on, it’s doable.  However, I don’t think that’s great TV.  Also: maybe I hate IFC.