The characters are screw-ups, but kind of likeable despite themselves. He also – amongst all his affairs – gets regularly sexually exploited / abused, which is something that a lot of people seem to miss.) There’s a similar coupling of bemusement and pessimism. Jeremy, on the other hand, is basically a sweet-heart… just a grossly irresponsible and idiotic one. Mark is scheming and bitter and really creepy when it comes to intimate relationships, stalking much younger girls, hacking into emails and generally being something of a prick. (As an aside, I find it interesting that most viewers seem to genuinely view Mark as the more moral of the pair, whereas he’s really just more sanctimonious. Importantly, Mark is just as corrupt as Jeremy, but is in a greater state of denial about the fact. The humour reminds me a bit of the Mitchell and Webb sitcom Peep Show with Owl as a neurotic and uptight Mark figure and Megg / Mogg more like Jeremy or Superhans. The whole thing is pretty bleak, but there are moments of real, hedonistic, ovaries-to-the-wall joy, amongst all the nervy drug-addled angst. It’s kind of like the progression from Beavis and Butthead to King of the Hill that helps you appreciate that there was actually a lot more darkness and sadness in the former show than you first thought. What starts out as stoner hijinks slowly curdles into something much more sour and melancholy. The first quarter of the book may seem a bit throw-away or even stupid… but persevere. This is really pretty though! I really like the shading. Sometimes he’ll take relish in the stupid jokes and pranks, while at other times, there’s a feeling of regret… not so much moral regret, but just a sense of life having been wasted, with all that the double meaning implies. You get the sense that Hanselmann in his early 30s is reflecting back upon the lifestyle of his 20s and is still trying to work through how he feels about it. He clearly likes these characters (and the whole thing wouldn’t work if he had real disdain for them… it would turn into something like Reefer Madness if the tone ever approached ‘judgemental’) but simultaneously feels distanced, even alienated, from them. He’s the only one of the three who imagines himself as “upwardly mobile”, but really he’s just an owl with pretences, approaching 30, who has issues with alcoholism and sex addiction. Hanselmann observes these characters with a weird cross between anthropological detachment and emotional intimacy. Owl is often the target of Megg and Mogg’s half-assed cruelty and a victim of their pranks. That is to say, their lives are kind of stagnant and their jokes mindless or puerile.
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