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Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray Column: Fan Fave 'Huff' Back for a 2nd Season

Posted on: Thursday, 30 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Ellen Gray, Philadelphia Daily News

Mar. 30--HUFF. 10 p.m. Sunday, Showtime.

SOMETIMES THE size of a TV show's audience can't begin to match the passion of its viewers.

Showtime, the premium-cable network that only this week surrendered in its effort to rescue Fox's "Arrested Development" after "AD" creator Mitch Hurwitz decided he'd had enough, knows from passion.

While its subscriber base continues to lag well behind HBO's, it's carved a niche for itself as the home of series like "The L Word,""Queer as Folk" and "Weeds" - shows that a relatively small group of people can't imagine living without.

In the case of "Huff," which returns for a second season Sunday, many of those people live in Los Angeles, which helps explain the seven Emmy nominations for Season 1 for a series that wasn't exactly on everyone's radar.

Geography may also explain why Oliver Platt, who plays Huff's extremely screwed-up lawyer, Russell Tupper, hasn't been able to go anywhere for months without being asked when "Huff" was coming back.

"I've never been involved in any sort of enterprise" that's gotten this kind of response, Platt said in January during a CBS/Showtime party on the West Coast.

"I mean I literally have strangers walk up to me on the street, grab me by the lapels and say, 'When is that show coming back?' " he said.

"Seriously. They'll manhandle me on the street. 'When, when, when?' " he added.

"I was at the dentist's the other day, a lady got out of the dentist's chair, ran down the hallway, with her bib on and like, you know, stuff coming out of her mouth [mumbling], 'When is "Huff" coming back?' "

OK, I've had a few e-mails myself, asking the same thing.

But nothing like that.

Platt, who'll spend several episodes this season sparring with uber-guest star Sharon Stone, would, on almost any other TV show, be the best reason to tune in, but "Huff" has one of those casts that would be fun to watch even if the people writing their lines weren't pretty good.

There's Hank Azaria, of course, playing beleaguered psychiatrist Craig "Huff" Huffstodt, who started off Season 1 watching a young patient kill himself in his office and begins this season trying to locate his own schizophrenic brother, Teddy (Andy Comeau), before he does the same thing.

Paget Brewster plays Huff's wife, who'll struggle this season with the demands of her hellishly self-centered mother-in-law, Izzy (Blythe Danner, in the role that won her one of the show's two Emmys), and her own dying mother (Swoosie Kurtz).

Thank goodness, then, for Platt and Stone, who'll provide much of the comic relief in a show that can make "The Sopranos" look like musical theater.

Even Russell, though, drug-addled as he often is, has a deeper side, which is why the episode last season that found him in bed with Izzy - the mother of his longtime friend - proved so unexpectedly moving.

"One of the things that I thought was so beautiful about that writing last year is that in most other shows, that would have been some kind of sweeps stunt and highly implausible," Platt said.

"But I totally bought it that those two lonely, f------up people found each other in that way," he said.

"I think it's about who they are. That was an accidental moment that was beautifully supported in the writing. And a lot of people have told me that."

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Copyright (c) 2006, Philadelphia Daily News

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Source: The Philadelphia Daily News

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