{"id":584546,"date":"2026-04-05T21:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T21:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/584546\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T21:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T21:28:10","slug":"rooster-and-the-wake-up-call-that-nobody-cares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/584546\/","title":{"rendered":"“Rooster” and the wake-up call that nobody cares"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whenever I\u2019ve needed a dopamine boost lately, two sources haven\u2019t let me down. The first is author Tetyana Denford\u2019s \u201cNobody Cares\u201d<\/a> videos on Instagram. The second is \u201cRooster,\u201d Bill Lawrence\u2019s latest HBO comedy.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re entirely unrelated entities: Denford\u2019s stitch reels fire up a second or two of some influencer\u2019s sexist<\/a> or body-shaming rhetoric<\/a> before she cuts in with a brisk, \u201cNobody cares<\/a>.\u201d Then she shares a delightful, fact-based piece of trivia like, \u201cHey, did you know that rats giggle when you tickle them<\/a>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI really like writing about non-toxic male friendships and relationships,\u201d Lawrence said. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s a fantasy, and maybe it\u2019s wish fulfillment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Denford films these tidbits from her car or while taking a walk in nature. Sometimes she\u2019s in bed. Denford\u2019s mission is to interrupt the spinning vortex of negativity in which the world is caught by redirecting our energy instead of contributing one more fiery rebuttal to sexist idiocy.<\/p>\n

\u201cRooster,\u201d on the other hand, is the story of an analog middle-aged man, Steve Carell\u2019<\/a>s Greg Russo, who has much in common with Lawrence\u2019s other better-loved heroes. Like Ted Lasso<\/a>, Greg is just getting on his feet after a divorce that\u2019s old news to everybody but him. Like \u201cShrinking<\/a>\u201d therapist Jimmy Laird, Greg, who teaches a class at Ludlow College, strikes up a friendship with a group of undergraduates, cemented through an evening of binge drinking. One of his students even crashes with him for a time, echoing Jimmy\u2019s blurred lines between orderly professionalism and invasive shows of caring.<\/p>\n

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(Katrina Marcinowski\/HBO) Steve Carell in \u201cRooster\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawrence has found a character formula viewers find appealing, and Carell\u2019s affability sells Greg\u2019s stumbles, even ones pulled from the annals of early aughts bro comedies. (In one of the show\u2019s low points, Greg\u2019s slippery soles cause him to fall onto a young woman, catching himself on her breasts, \u201cBenny Hill\u201d style.) But in a recent conversation I had with Lawrence, his co-creator Matt Tarses, and Carell before the debut of \u201cRooster,\u201d Lawrence characterized it simply.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really like writing about non-toxic male friendships and relationships,\u201d Lawrence said. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s a fantasy, and maybe it\u2019s wish fulfillment. But to see a mentor figure with somebody else talk openly and candidly about who they are and how they feel is of great value to me, personally. And so if you\u2019ve noticed, that is with intent.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, he says, is the result of growing up in a family that wasn\u2019t emotional and shunned feelings. I\u2019d wager that many of Denford\u2019s pet targets, including silver-haired, middle-aged guys preaching about what men want from \u201ctheir\u201d women, are the products of such households.<\/p>\n

Greg, inspired by author Carl Hiaasen, is an average man navigating new adventures in academia. Lawrence, who worked with him on his adaptation of Hiaasen\u2019s \u201cBad Monkey,\u201d describes him as surprisingly modest, entirely unlike his swaggering creations. Greg is, therefore, bracingly normal in the way he struggles to adjust to the campus\u2019 political correctness. He stumbles, sometimes badly, but finds a lot of grace along the way. And as we\u2019re questioning our long-held beliefs about \u201csink or swim\u201d individualism and intellectual elitism, this is also an interrupter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could not fill a piece of paper with what I learned academically in college,\u201d Lawrence admitted, \u201cbut I nostalgically remember it as a place and a safe environment to figure out who my people were, who my community was and what kind of person I wanted to be.\u201d That\u2019s what he wanted to show anyone wondering whether college has any purpose.<\/p>\n

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(Katrina Marcinowski\/HBO) Evan Jachelski, Xavier Beloved, Noah Grismer, Maximo Salas and Steve Carell in \u201cRooster\u201d<\/p>\n

America\u2019s masculinity crisis, as seen in the manosphere or, say, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth\u2019<\/a>s preening press conference jock jams, is really a male insecurity crisis. Whatever you call this thing, it is dangerous to the planet\u2019s health, perpetuating war and painting empathy as abhorrent.<\/p>\n

Equitable relationships between men and women are the reason America has lost its greatness, say the dark web\u2019s lost manchildren, and these days, too much of the world, including our government, bends to their warped preaching. Denford\u2019s steadily growing \u201cnobody cares\u201d audience regularly tosses sticks of dynamite into that vortex in the name of protecting our sanity. The world is too distracted with its own stuff to judge yours, she writes<\/a>. Stop paying attention to narcissists and start living life on your terms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s about reinvention. I think it\u2019s about growth. It\u2019s definitely about love, and I think it\u2019s about community,\u201d Carell told Salon.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of us are basically weird little cucumbers wandering around in a messy world, just trying to figure ourselves out!\u201d she declares in a post, one of the few recent ones that doesn\u2019t thumb its nose at somebody else\u2019s insulting advice or bewildering misinformation.<\/p>\n

With \u201cRooster,\u201d Lawrence, Tarses and Carell have created a more intimate dynamic centered on a father-daughter bond that has petrified a bit. Greg\u2019s daughter Katie (Charly Clive), an art professor at Ludlow, constantly shows him that maybe he\u2019s the one who, perhaps, isn\u2019t as emotionally whole as she is.<\/p>\n

Initially, Greg came to Ludlow for a speaking engagement that happened to coincide with the implosion of his daughter Katie\u2019s marriage to Archie (Phil Dunster), a philandering fellow professor who knocks up a graduate student. But when Ludlow\u2019s president, Walter Mann (John C. McGinley), presses him into service as the school\u2019s writer-in-residence, it forces Greg out of his safe, comfortable rut and into the rock tumbler of campus life. He doesn\u2019t respond to his various wake-up calls with stubborn defiance but a curiosity that shifts his moping into something akin to a geeky, fun-loving second adolescence.<\/p>\n

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(Katrina Marcinowski\/HBO) Steve Carell and Charly Clive in \u201cRooster\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRooster\u201d is a vehicle for Carell, who called the pilot script one of the smartest he\u2019s ever read. Lawrence, however, ultimately means it to be about Katie\u2019s self-actualization. She moves to a place for a job, quickly marries and focuses on that relationship instead of fostering friendships, following a popular prescription for marital success offered by Instagram dweebs to women who didn\u2019t ask, and don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

Through Greg, Lawrence and Tarses show us that dolt\u2019s opposite, the well-meaning dad who wants to hold his daughter\u2019s hand through life\u2019s tough spots. Katie quickly lets him know this would make it much harder for her to figure out who she wants to be, independent of anyone else, whether that\u2019s her husband, her father, or a dangerously loyal student.<\/p>\n

Carell said he was initially drawn to its father-daughter relationship but ultimately found it to be about much more. \u201cI think it\u2019s about reinvention. I think it\u2019s about growth. It\u2019s definitely about love, and I think it\u2019s about community,\u201d he told Salon. Like Lawrence\u2019s other series, none of the characters in \u201cRooster\u201d are irredeemable. At their worst, they\u2019re weird; in summary, they\u2019re simply imperfect. \u201cThat\u2019s the sort of thing that I love to watch and . . . it sounds so over the top, but it kind of fills my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Similar compliments have been showered on \u201cTed Lasso,\u201d \u201cShrinking\u201d and \u201cScrubs<\/a>,\u201d each of which expounds its own version of believing. Replicating successful formulas can be the key to longevity in the entertainment business, but it also has a way of losing its charm, especially with critics. \u201cRooster\u201d hasn\u2019t earned the soaring reviews those other shows enjoyed, but some of the ones viewers love now also had awkward beginnings before they figured out what they needed to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe certainly are living in a time where we have enough we can look around and feel pessimistic,\u201d Tarses said, \u201cbut I don\u2019t think this is escapism, and I don\u2019t really see this as aspirational.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, he said, Greg Russo\u2019s world, for all its awkwardness, is one that he and Lawrence would want to live in, like the place Denford would like more of us to find ourselves. In that theoretical promised land, the objective would be to care deeply about the people and issues that are worth our attention, not about stuff that doesn\u2019t matter. And wouldn\u2019t that feel better?<\/p>\n

New episodes of \u201cRooster\u201d air at 10 p.m. Sundays on HBO and stream on HBO Max.<\/p>\n

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