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Review: House of Lies

Television

Let the games begin

WRESTLING SOCIETY X: A strange, renunciatory art seeks a higher narrative life form.

Well, it probably did. But not for long: fellow celebrity enforcer Erik “Ponch” Estrada was bearing down in his cruiser, in a Wagnerian overkill of lights and noise. Fish-in-a-barrel time for the Muncie PD! In a trice this mild onanist was all cuffed up. He protested that he was out “getting some gas.” “You were masturbating in front of a police officer who was La Toya Jackson!” bellowed Ponch, out of his mind. Ponch is a riot, but the real star of Armed & Famous is the city of Muncie and its wonderful superfluity of human misery. Young lovers have a tiff and break some bottles; by the time the cops arrive they’ve carved each other up. “I love you!” says the woman, her face festively laced with blood. Two hog-like sisters scream at each other on a knuckle of scuffed lawn while their children moan from the porch. A man dies quietly and alone in front of his TV. And in the background, inserted into the scene almost surreptitiously, we see small, hunched people with patchy chemo hair or monstrous braces bolted to their heads, clues and indicators of a fallen world.

Neither was it all fun and games over on VH1, where the bellicose Tiffany a/k/a New York was sorting through her suitors on Episode #3 of I Love New York (Mondays at 9 pm). The challenge this time was for the assembled dogs to impress NY with a boardroom presentation outlining their net worth, earning potential, big-business dreams, and so on. Altogether too much for the fragile, frowning Pootie, who had a verbal breakdown — “I’m running from the repo man . . . I was an extra in War of the Worlds. . . PLEASE don’t interrupt me!” — before collapsing into wheezing sobs and then passing out. Dining that night with NY’s mother, Sister Patterson, Pootie was trembling so hard he couldn’t hold his soup spoon. “I’m scared for my life,” he told her. Psych alert: Pootie had to go. “Don’t do anything stupid,” advised the swollen jock 12-Pack as Pootie jammed his clothes into a bag. “I’d never do nothing to harm myself, man,” replied Pootie, very wise for an instant. “Only God knows my destiny.” The winner of the challenge, meanwhile, was the lisping T-Weed, who claimed to have assets worth $100 million. And over dinner with New York he spoke the glittering language of cyber finance, of “source files” and “programming codes”: “We deal with clients and there are, uh, inflows of money . . . ” Inflows? Sister Patterson ran a background check: T-Weed’s credit cards were maxed out and his last job had been a month-long engagement at Munchie’s Pizza.