Previewing Kidding

When you have a television show that reteams Michel Gondry with Jim Carrey who gave us Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you know you are getting something weird. Sure Kidding is not as surreal as their movie, but it is still pretty weird. Carrey plays Mr. Pickle a children’s television host that will bring images of Mr. Rogers (who is have his own small revival thanks to a documentary). He is so beloved that when hoodlums steal his car and start to strip it only to find his friend Ukularry, they put the car back together and leave the car back where they stole it.

As pure as Mr. Pickle is, he is so naïve that he goes in to have his phone fixed when someone does not text him back, his executive producer / dad Frank Langella (Masters of the Universe), is as shred. See Mr. Pickle has turned into a hundred and twelve million dollar licensing industry. So when Carrey’s son dies in a car crash and Carrey slowly starts to lose it, Langella looks at way to keep the Mr. Pickle franchise rolling without his son.

Caught in the middle is sister / daughter Catherine Keener (Death to Smoochy) who is also the head puppeteer and possible heir to her father. Though no dead child, she has some major issues of her own at home include a daughter who has a tick more annoying than that of Brick Heck that she picked up after she her father with her piano teacher. The death of his son also put a strain on his marriage to Judy Greer (Marmaduke) who has moved on to another man while the kid that did survive the car crash have figure out what is life without the twin that was always there.

Kidding could be your typical corporate power struggle or sad sack drama, but add Jim Carrey into the equation as an overtly earnest kids host, and you get something inherently weird and totally unpredictable as the character slowly descents into madness. Be it shaving a strip down the middle of his head, goes, on a date with a grown up fan, spending time with a terminal cancer patciant, or how he deals with the driver who struck his son. Not knowing where it goes next will likely be the best part of Kidding, for better or worse.

Kidding airs Sundays at 10:00 on Showtime.