I’ll be first to bash a Franklin in the Glades if we get any more cable shows about cool-dude lawyers, female renegade lawyers, edgy federal agents partnered with ex-cons and all that. But I’m not sure a show about an obnoxious man dressed as a dog is the right cure.
Situated among the mid-tier cable channels and their many formulaic crime-solving dramas, only FX exhibits a genuine desire to show viewers that commercial television can be provocative and new. So when FX unveils a new series, I snap-to, because the results can be superlative and instantly addictive, as with “Sons of Anarchy” and “Justified.”
But rarely is an FX show as puzzlingly discordant as “Wilfred,” a darkly comedic series premiering on the network Thursday night. In moments where it ought to be subversively sweet, “Wilfred” opts for sour; in what might have been its funniest bits, it suddenly rolls over and plays dead; where it wishes to be ironic and droll, it is often just dumb or mean. Most oddly, it does something you’d think would be impossible in our culture: It makes you dislike a dog.
The dog is the main character in “Wilfred,” who is actually an unpleasantly cruel-minded Australian man in a dog suit. Where it would seem the rest of the world sees Wilfred as a real mutt on four legs, only a depressed lawyer who lives next door (Elijah Wood, co-starring as Ryan) sees Wilfred the way the audience does, as a guy walking upright in a fur suit.
Lifted intact from the hit Australian show of the same name and adapted for American audiences by executive producer David Zuckerman, “Wilfred” would appear to be crafted from an indie-hipster aesthetic, which may be part of the problem: The show is cool to the point of being cold.
We meet Ryan on the night he’s decided to commit suicide by swallowing a bottle of pills. (They turn out to be placebos.) After a frantic night spent tossing, turning and becoming even more depressed, Ryan is jolted by a knock on the door: His cute neighbor, Jenna (Fiona Gubelmann), is there to ask a simple favor: Would he keep her dog company while she’s out for the day? Enter Wilfred, who is bad news from the start, but not in an outdated Marmaduke sense of mischief.
Soon enough, Wilfred and Ryan fire up a bong. They have lunch at a restaurant, where Wilfred humps the waitress. Is Ryan hallucinating Wilfred’s humanlike qualities? Why can no one else see the man in the dog suit? You’re asking questions, which is apparently the wrong way to watch the show. The edgy psychosis that Elijah Wood (now 30) brings to the part of Ryan is all but canceled out by Jason Gann’s performance as Wilfred.
