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Huff - The Complete First Season Review B000E3L7F0

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Huff - The Complete First Season Overview

Dr. Craig Huffstodt is a family man and a successful psychiatrist who gets a wake-up call when one of his patients, a 15-year-old boy, commits suicide during a therapy session. Huff's whole existence - as doctor, husband, father, son, brother and friend - goes through a dramatic reawakening as he begins to question who he is, what he's made of and how he fits in --- anywhere. Having always considered himself the eternal caretaker, whose mission is to save people, Huff suddenly realizes that he can't save everyone. The lines of reality start to blur as he goes from the functionally insane at the office to the daily insanities of life with his family at home. His nurturing nature is tested at nearly every turn and soon his so-called "normal" world and family life start to become as surreal as the world of his patients.

Huff - The Complete First Season Specifications

Dr. Craig Huffstodt (Hank Azaria, Shattered Glass) has it all--beautiful wife Beth (Paget Brewster, Andy Richter Controls the Universe), cute son Byrd (Anton Yelchin), sleek golden retriever, silver BMW, and tastefully-appointed model home. In the pilot, an inconsolable teenager pulls a gun out of his bag and shoots himself--right in the middle of a therapy session. Suddenly, Huff starts to question everything: the job, the marriage, life. Created by Bob Lowry (Any Day Now) and produced by Scott Winant (thirtysomething) for Showtime, Huff combines drama, comedy, flashbacks, and dream sequences to examine one "rich, guilt-ridden white man's" struggle with the Abyss. Sometimes it's Frasier, sometimes The Sopranos--sometimes American Beauty.

Appearances to the contrary, Huff's well-constructed façade is not without its fissures, and as Byrd ominously quotes in episode eight ("Cold Day in Shanghai"), "If you gaze for long into the Abyss, the Abyss also gazes into you--Nietzsche." Live-in mother Izzy (Emmy winner Blythe Danner) is a judgmental busybody, younger brother Teddy (Andy Comeau, Providence) is a sympathetic schizophrenic, and best buddy Russell (Oliver Platt having the time of his life) is a pill-popping, cocaine-snorting, booze-guzzling lawyer whose moral compass has been missing "ever since my daddy's sperm hit the egg." Then there's psychotic patient Melody (Lara Flynn Boyle, The Practice), smart-talking office manager Paula (Kimberly Russell), and homeless Hungarian musician István (Jack Laufer) who keeps crossing his path. (Does he really even exist?) Other recurring characters include Huff's estranged father, Ben (Robert Forster), and Beth's terminally ill mother, Madeline (Swoosie Kurtz). In its first year, Huff garnered seven Emmy nominations and was renewed for a second season. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

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