If I were to watch this show as a comedy, I would have found it incredibly irritating and outrageously offensive. The show isn't funny, and I don't think it's really supposed to be. It's actually quite sad and deep.It's about struggling with bipolar disorder. As someone who struggles with mental illness myself, I find it fascinating. It's like looking through someone else's eyes. I find that the structure of the show how things transition and connect is very reflective of how my own mind works.My recommendation: If you want to better understand what it can be like to live with a mood disorder, watch Lady Dynamite. Don't watch it as a comedy though; watch it as dark, serious drama.

It was almost impossible to pay attention to what was on the screen. This is not due to having some form of inhumanly low attention span, but due to the fact that the plot was too "random" to follow. Some scenes people were replaced with goats, for some reason....It was never explained, and I don't really think there was a reason for it. It was randomness for randomness sake, which is an unfortunate trend for television. This is why children's cartoons like Uncle Grandpa are hated, and yet some "genius" green-lit this sense of humor for a live action show that was probably intended for adults..I think?The voices were too hyper and grating on the ears, and honestly gave me an actual migraine. If you ever choose to watch this show, keep the volume as low as possible.

Lady Dynamite is so zany and out there that it was a little difficult to get a grasp on when I first watched it. Ironically, my difficulty with the material wasn't because there's nothing like it on TV but because I saw traces of nearly everything else on TV: The cutaways of 30 Rock, the awkward attempts at social justice statements from Master of None, the use of a comedic veneer to mask trauma that's shown on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, the 4th wall randomness of Man Seeking Woman or Family Guy, and the feminist celebration of woman as proudly dysfunctional adult from Broad City. That's not even bringing up the long list of shows that feature a comedic actor playing exaggerated versions of themselves pursuing showbiz start-up that starts with the Larry Sanders Show and goes all the way up to Comedians, Difficult People and Garfunkel and Oates (all relatively stale editions of the genre because all the good plots in this genre have been used up).Welcome to Peak TV: Where the overabundance of innovative voices on TV makes it harder to stick out and a comic voice as original as Maria Bamford is penalized for not coming out five years ago.What's good news is that a lot of these complaints are less valid after a scattershot pilot that's loaded with every gimmick imaginable. After that, the show starts to even out and one can see some of the better creative decisions behind the show. It helps to separate the show from other entries in the "comedians playing themselves" genre in that Bamford isn't trying to advance her show business career at all. At times, she seems blissfully ignorant of exactly how well she's doing (her faux sister Susan is alarmed at how much she makes at a studio session). In another episode, she turns down Judd Apatow because in that particular episode, her new focus on life is about doing as little as possible in life. After a few episodes, one can better make the argument that this even if it's a clichéd genre, Bamford's work is the ultimate personal statement: Maria Bamford is simply figuring out her life and way of expressing it on screen as she goes along.The show is a bit hit-or-miss on the strength of its plots but it helps that the 2nd and 3rd episodes-- dating a bisexual guy, trying to form a family band, and awkwardly attempting to be politically correct-- are winners.

I wanted to see this show after with a lot of approval from some high profile comedians, and all this has done is ruin their credibility.You can sum up this entire show with the word "wacky". This is like a live-action kid's cartoon riddled with zany plots. So, if you get a laugh out of bright colors or your Dad shaking keys in your face - you'll love this show.Mind you, there is something here that is salvageable. Maria Bamford is great (I love watching her just go), but it's like everyone around her is an exaggeration of a terrible human being. Nobody likes those Los Angeles assholes, let alone a magnified behavior of them. For every single person with a dialogue stemmed in f words ... remove them; One is fine, but a majority is lazy writing. One might believe it was sloppy improvisation.There was a nice set of cameos; the modern day half-child of Tom Bosely, Patton Oswalt as a bike cop. Ana Gasteyer makes an appearance as a cackling talent agent. Ed Begley Jr is in there as confused as every character he plays is. But the biggest surprise was the show pointing out everything that's wrong with it, in the script ...Oswalt tells Maria this stand-up gimmick has been done before and John Mulaney adds his disapproval of the autobiographical trope. Yet this Mitch Hurwitz and Pam Brady vehicle doesn't slow day or back away from this device for an instant. The show insists on being compared to Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Louis & Arrested Development - Yet as we do, it's bluntly apparent Lady Dynamite isn't anywhere near that caliber of entertainment.It's a failure.