Review: Showtime's House of Lies

One of the biggest problems facing Showtime today – or I guess really, one of the biggest criticism of the channel, since it's not like it has problems racking up viewers or anything – is that all of its “comedies” aren't really all that funny. Now, this doesn't have to be an inherently bad thing; many “comedies” have given us great moments without being all that funny, like Louie or even Showtime's own United States of Tara. But far too often, these comedies contain the superficialities of humor – music cues, fast-paced scenes, quippy dialogue – without the jokes to back it up, and far too often these shows take the “dark comedy” label to mean that they can be super-depressing without giving us any sort of levity to balance it out. Showtime's latest offering, House of Lies, may not have any of these problems, but it's unfortunately brought down by even worse flaws.