Felt
Monday, May 6
Logo, 10:30pm ET/PT (moves to regular Mondays at 10pm ET/PT timeslot starting next week)
What’s funnier than soul-baring, gut-wrenching sessions of couples therapy? Puppets, of course!
Sure, I could describe Felt for you, saying that it takes actual audio from real-life clients undergoing couples and sex therapy and uses puppets to dramatize them. But that’s probably not going to give you a full idea of what watching the show is like. Are we supposed to laugh at these people’s most intimate and vulnerable moments being made public? Is it some sort of weird art experiment? Do Kermit and Miss Piggy have conversations like this?
Brent Zacky, senior vice president of original programming and development for Logo, understands — and welcomes — your curiosity.
“The best way to explain the show is for people to watch it,” Zacky says, acknowledging with a laugh how that might make for a tough sales approach. “But it’s provocative and outrageous, and I think it’s an intriguing idea.
“There’s a serious side to it, but … the puppets add a layer of levity to it, and a layer of comedy to it. I found myself in the original pitch tape laughing and also having an emotional reaction to something that was so intensely private.”
In a strange way, Zacky says he also believes the puppets add a layer of, yes, realism.
“Real people on camera tend to change the way they act a little bit, and this seems much more genuine to me, because people are only being audio-recorded,” he says. “Everything you’re hearing is true and real and unaffected by the fact that it’s being observed. It can be somewhat uncomfortable to watch something like that if you’re watching a real intense therapy session, but when you add the puppets on top of it, it makes it eminently watchable.”
The show will feature both gay and straight couples, and Zacky says he believes it will help highlight the similarities in those relationships more than the differences. Some couples will also recur throughout the eight episodes, and the therapists will be switched out as well.
How audiences take Felt, Zacky says, could vary wildly based on what’s going on for them at home.
“The thing that might make me laugh might not make you laugh,” he says. “Part of that, too, is probably going to depend on where you are in your own relationships in your life. Something might be a sore spot for you but a really funny point for me. Particularly if there’s something you see in your partner and that’s happening in your life. People don’t usually laugh at things they do themselves, but when they recognize something they see in someone else, it’s usually worth a chuckle.”
Photo: Credit: Logo