Tale of Two TV Shows

For my one and only blog follower, it is no secret that I am a fan of the TV program Wilfred. But I have found another program "Call Me Fitz" that parallels Wilfred albeit in reverse. Let me explain...

In Wilfred, the main character Ryan (played by Elijah Wood) is basically a good guy but troubled by the conventional life he has slipped into. He tries to kill himself which triggers the arrival of Wilfred. Wilfred (played by co-creator Jason Gann) is the neighbor's dog, which appears to Ryan as a talking man in a dog suit. But to everyone else, Wilfred is just a regular dog. Wilfred tries to teach Ryan how to live a looser, funner, more unconventional life. Ryan and Wilfred drink beer and smoke pot all day long during their various adventures. The sexual hijinks with Wilfred and "bear" are absolutely hillarious.

In Call Me Fitz, Fitz is basically a bad guy, a man-whore, hard partying, drug and alcohol addled, scumbag that uses just about everyone around him - especially women - for his own purposes. He is a used car salesman who gets into an accident on a test drive with a customer. This is when Larry shows up. Larry is probably the human incarnation of Fitz's childhood stuffed rabbit Kevin (although I have only seen season one so far and that is only suggested.) Larry knows much of Fitz's past which suggests he is somewhat supernatural - a guardian angel perhaps. Larry's job (as Fitz's conscience) is to teach him to curb his wild ways and basically be good (or at least not so bad.) Despite his mistreatment of women, Fitz is a a lovable character. The program is very funny.

The parallels are obvious - these two shows are almost identical - in reverse. Right down to the dysfunctional nutty sister. Although Fitz's sister Meghan is much funnier than Ryan's sister Kristen.

Wilfred and Fitz are great shows and seem to come out of the same mold. The US version of Wilfred is shown on the FX network. Call Me Fitz is a bit hard to find as DirectTV has the rights and shows the program on their Audience Network channel. If you have Netflix or Amazon, Fitz should be easy to locate. Check out both of these programs and let me know if I'm on target or not.

By the way... if you check these out, you *must* start at the first episode or they will not make sense.