Documentary Now! Review: Long Gone (Season 3 Episode 6)
The jazz world becomes the subject of parody on Documentary Now! Season 3 Episode 6, “Long Gone,” as Fred Armisen’s fictitious Rex Logan’s life is remembered.
When “Long Gone” focuses on the jazz, it’s a clever affair of specific jokes and oddball humor that really make for huge potential. Unfortunately, it is swallowed up by a tangent which leaves the episode feeling far too unfocused.
A lot of the episode’s humor comes in making truly monotonous and normal moments sound like legendary tall tales in jazz music history. Stories of Rex passed out in his food and unable to make it to a show are treated like big occasions, and for that, the show finds comedy in minutia.
The show’s continued saving grace is the style it exhibits in how it tells its story. The way it adapts to its subject, in this case presented in a black and white intellectualism style with a mind for character and personality, really helps deliver in Rex an artful look on his artistry and peculiarities.
However, after Documentary Now! Season 3 Episode 5, “Searching For Mr. Larson,” Fred Armisen is more stilted and not as personable here as Rex Logan.
There are flashes of brilliance, like in his dressing down of a child who he performs with at one point, and his lazy answer to the question of enjoying the making of the documentary. But they are too far and few between, where other, less present characters pick up the slack and provide the bigger laughs.
Natasha Lyonne is excellent as Carla. It’s a shame how little she appears in the episode, but it’s a softer, quieter performance for Lyonne, driven by a particular song which, while pretentiously silly by design, is heartfelt by the emotion she exudes during it.
Despite its positives, “Long Gone” struggles with maintaining itself over the course of the episode. The excursions of Rex becoming Minister of Culture for another country is a funny aside, but it takes up too much of the main narrative and becomes excessive.
And beyond spending a short scene together during a performance, the relationship between Rex and Carla, and by extension potentially great scenes between Armisen and Lyonne, are non-existent.
This makes the final performance of the episode, of Rex singing “Long Gone,” a beautiful rendition, but it does not hold any emotional weight when showing quick images of them both together, something we are seeing almost for the first time.
Documentary Now! Season 3 Episode 6, “Long Gone,” is wildly successful when it stays on topic. The sidetracking into Rex’s oblivious political career causes the episode to run out of steam and sidelines what could have been a wonderful episode about a jazz musician and his love affair with music and Natasha Lyonne’s character.
Instead, it becomes a muddled and unfocused episode that, while still with some funny moments, does not gel completely.
What did you think of this episode of Documentary Now? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Documentary Now! airs Wednesdays at 11/10c on IFC.
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Kevin Lever
Kevin Lever has been following television closely for most of his life, but in starting to cover it, he has grown a further appreciation. He strives to give the blockbusters their due, and give the lesser known shows a spotlight to find more fans.