‘Paul T. Goldman’ Review: Peacock’s Docuseries Straddles an Uneasy, Laugh-Free Line Between Real Life and Satire

If you follow a lot of screenwriters or showrunners on Twitter, you’ve probably seen one or all of them make a statement urging random fans not to send them unsolicited writing or pitches, explaining the variety of reasons why this practice is legally, professionally and personally problematic.

Credit Jason Woliner’s new Peacock comic docuseries, Paul T. Goldman, with serving as a six-part cautionary tale on what happens if you beg a reasonably powerful creative talent to take authorship of your story and, simultaneously, your life. Paul T. Goldman is an undeniably fascinating, invariably uncomfortable piece of television that could spark provocative conversations about the relationship between filmmaker and subject, between fact and fiction, and about the delicate process of blending real life and satire. Is it a probing and well told exploration of the delusions churned out by the Hollywood dream factory, or is it a somewhat gross, thoroughly contemptuous evisceration of somebody whose greatest sin is loneliness and an eagerness to be validated (or eviscerated)?

The truth is that I don’t quite know. Critics have been sent five of the Paul T. Goldman episodes, and while my own embrace of the story wavered between curiosity and annoyance with how Woliner treats his main character, I can imagine how a clever final installment could transform the show into something truly special. I can even more easily imagine how it could push me that last step from annoyance to actual anger.

Our protagonist here is, as the title would suggest, Paul T. Goldman (not his real name), a Florida-based insurance drone whose midlife second marriage to the secretive Audrey unspooled into an ugly divorce and heightened accusations that started at fraud and infidelity and then escalated … wildly. (Peacock wants to keep things unspoiled.) Goldman turned his experience into a self-published book and turned the self-published book into a Lifetime-style movie script.

And it’s all true! Except for the parts that aren’t.

A decade ago, Goldman began pitching his story to various entertainment industry personages, hoping to use Twitter connections to fuel cinematic success and therefore celebrity. One can easily argue that in casting his pitch net as wide as Woliner, director of the Borat sequel, as well as comedy-documentary hybrids like Nathan for You and Jon Benjamin Has a Van, Goldman deserved whatever potential mockery was coming his way. One could also argue that in going to Woliner, Goldman was showing a sense of humor about himself and his story. And definitely one can argue that the presence of Woliner as the steering force here proves that nothing in Paul T. Goldman is supposed to be taken the least bit seriously. One can argue too that even if the series insists on every level that what it’s doing is based on facts, or at least based on Goldman’s perspective on facts, it’s all fiction — though if that’s how we want to take it, I’m not sure if I see any point at all.

So what is Paul T. Goldman as an actual series? It’s theoretically Goldman’s story, told partially through documentary-style interviews stretching over 10 years, and partially a filmed version of Goldman’s screenplay shot with sometimes recognizable actors in lieu of reenactments. Then it’s partially a behind-the-scenes exploration of the process of filming that screenplay, as we watch Woliner transform himself into the real protagonist of the story, first as Goldman’s enabler, then as his glorified therapist and possibly as the ultimate arbiter of truth. Whether Goldman or Woliner emerges as the hero of Paul T. Goldman may turn out to be the key revelation of the finale, the determining factor of whether viewers walk away feeling vicarious catharsis or generally dirty. And should viewers who gape and gawk at Paul T. Goldman and Goldman himself come away with a general sense of complicity in a fundamentally voyeuristic endeavor?

I somehow doubt the latter will be the case, because the series instantly points to one of my ongoing reservations about Borat in all of that character’s evolving forms, that the franchise violates what is for me a central tenet of good satire — namely, that you avoid punching down. I get hung up on dumb questions like “Is the person being duped here deserving of global humiliation in perpetuity?”

Some of Borat’s targets are fully worthy of the mockery. They’re racists or sexists or xenophobes or Rudy Giuliani, and, in a few cases, they possess exactly enough low-level power or influence where it’s better to stop than to coddle them. More often, though, they’re isolated and insulated nobodies being goaded into their own eternal notoriety by a movie star bankrolled by a billion-dollar corporation.

For me, Goldman feels thus far like he fits closer to the latter category. Unlike in the Borat adventures or in Nathan Fielder’s various shows, there is no attempt to spread the direction of the punchlines. Every joke in Paul T. Goldman is at Paul T. Goldman’s expense. It’s one thing to laugh at him for being a very bad actor even when playing himself — he demanded the opportunity, so put hubris, or damaging narcissism, high on any list of perceived sins — but it’s another to mock his general nerdiness or his exaggerated Jewishness. Goldman asked for this, but does he deserve it? It’s clear from very early on that the outlandish story Goldman is spinning isn’t as 99 percent accurate as he first claims, but when his exaggerations become malignant enough to warrant punishment or even this level of platformed ridicule is harder to diagnose.

I don’t think I laughed once at Paul T. Goldman, but I found its presentation surprising at times, and there’s something compelling to its undercurrent of sadness, especially in light of the ongoing debate over exploitation in the true-crime space. You can place Paul T. Goldman next to Peacock’s Joe vs. Carole or A Friend of the Family — two scripted semi-adaptations of documentaries in which sneering at the subjects and offering healing are meant to maybe go hand-and-hand — and engage in real debate. If Joe vs. Carole could offer vindication and humanization to Carole Baskin and if A Friend of the Family can offer another layer of catharsis for Jan Broberg, what is Paul T. Goldman actually getting out of Paul T. Goldman? What is he hoping to get out of it? What level of sincerity is at the root of his inaccuracies? And what responsibility does Woliner play as the owner of Goldman’s life rights and as the person, in this power dynamic, with all the clout?

What I’ve seen so far is right on the edge of gross and misguided, and I’ll be intrigued to see audience responses, which will likely vary wildly — if anybody notices that a show on Peacock that isn’t a Yellowstone repeat exists at all.

Though most of Paul T. Goldman is somewhere between condescending and contemptuous, there are fleeting hints at compassion. That range recalls the difference between laughing at Tommy Wiseau when watching The Room — Wiseau, like Goldman, sets aside lack of talent to claim the mantle of attempted stardom, his hubris giving us freedom to laugh at and not with — and the fleeting if inconsistent bursts of understanding granted in The Disaster Artist (which, like Paul T. Goldman, is executive produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg). Except that in this case, the compassion is almost never directed at Goldman, but rather at the people who are kind to him in difference ways, including the aforementioned variously recognizable stars of the reenacted movie — among them Melinda McGraw, Paul Ben-Victor and one direct-to-VOD icon who pops up in the fifth episode — or Goldman’s first wife, whom he objectifies in Russian mail-order terms, but is obviously much, much more substantive than that.

I found the compassionate sides of Paul T. Goldman to be better than the attempts at humor, and the hints at the complicity of Hollywood storytelling in Goldman’s delusions to be worthy of consideration. And I found the whole thing irksome, with the blame thus far spread equally at the feet of Goldman and Woliner. Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, to me, did an initially smarter job of making it clear that the friction, instead of just the taunting, was the point. A smart ending could have me hailing Paul T. Goldman as subversive and brilliant. A dumb ending could have me lamenting it as rubbernecking trash.

Sometimes you get a conclusive review. Sometimes you’re just treated to my grappling and, hopefully, get a sense of whether you’re interested in participating yourself.

Source: Hollywood