#chip baskets

It’s the damndest thing, what Baskets has become. Even at the start, it was never a conventional comedy, but it had some of the signposts of one: the identical twins gag, or Chip’s obliviousness to his professional and romantic prospects. And it was very much a Zach Galifianakis vehicle, since he created it with Jonathan Krisel and Louis C.K. But it was also deeply sad from minute one, and Louie Anderson’s performance as Christine was never treated as a joke, and the show has only doubled down on the melancholy of it all in this season. At times, it’s felt like a series where Christine was the main character — and since the show’s named after the family, that can work — and even when the emphasis is back on Chip, his struggle to find his place in the world goes very much hand-in-hand with hers. And, remarkably, both of them grew up quite a lot over the course of this season: Chip after his hobo odyssey ended in tragedy, Christine through meeting Ken and dealing with the death of her mother. This comedy about a bumbling clown who doesn’t understand why no one likes him has very quickly and gracefully morphed into a drama about a woman getting a chance to truly live for the first time when she’s in her 60s, and a man who’s only starting to figure life out after wallowing on society’s bottom rungs for a long time.