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The duo of Max's Bookie Season 2 creators Chuck Lorre and Nick Bakay have been around for a long time. They have been legends of the sitcom game for decades, and their resumes include hit shows like Mom, The Big Bang Theory, Young Sheldon, and The King of Queens.
But as Bob Dylan once sang, “The times are a-changing.” Sitcoms are no exception. Both Lorre and Bakay are aware of how the medium is changing. Like Danny (Sebastian Maniscalco) and Ray (Omar J. Dorsey), Lorre and Bakay have dealt with the changing landscape of sitcoms.
Speaking to ClutchPoints ahead of the release of Bookie Season 2 on Max, Lorre and Bakay discussed this. Lorre began by noting the move to streaming services, which don't have the same “broadcast standards,” which lends itself to “bigger, deeper” stories.
“There's no censorship,” Lorre explained. “There's no time restrictions. When I did The Kominsky Method on Netflix, and they put all the episodes on at once, you could tell a story that moved through 8-10 episodes and know that when the audience is watching episode five, they've seen one, two, three, and four. So you could tell a much bigger, deeper story than on CBS, where you have 22 minutes and you're out.
“And there's no guarantee on CBS on any given week that the audience saw last week's show, so your storytelling options are circumscribed by how much the audience is with you week in and week out,” he added.
Bookie is a Max streaming series, which Lorre believes “gave us more freedom than we have any right to have.” He found the level of freedom he and Bakay had to be “disorienting.”
Traditional multi-cams are a thing of the past?
For Bakay, he discussed how multi-cam sitcoms have evolved, citing Norman Lear as the leading force behind the change, and also recalled his experience working on Mom with Lorre.
“[He] gave birth to the era of the awful ‘very special episode,' which I think killed them. And then they came back without any meaning,” he explained. “I was proud to be a part of a show like Mom that then came back [as a] show that could be about something again and not be cloying.
“I think that is where the resurrection lies,” he concluded.
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What is Bookie Season 2 about?
Bookie Season 2 picks up right where the first left off. Danny is trying to get his wife back after their split, which results in a hilarious U2 bit that Chuck Lorre and Nick Bakay confirmed was a nod to the Irish rock band.
“It served two purposes, too,” Lorre said. “He thought he was talking to an Aryan Nation kind of character.”
The series follows a bookie, Danny, who is trying to survive the legalization of sports gambling while in Los Angeles, California. He is joined by Ray for his adventures. Andrea Anders, Vanessa Ferlito, Jorge Garcia, Maxim Swinton, and Rob Corddry also star in the series.
Bookie Season 2 is airing on Max.
