Season one of HBO’s—or, rather, Steve Dildarian’s—The Life and Times of Tim was possibly the animated cable curio of 2009. Eschewing the hyperrealist ribaldry and pop misappropriation with which the Adult Swim juggernaut has continued churning out meta catchphrases and anthropomorphic food stuffs worth silk-screening onto shoulder-hugging tees,Tim finds humor in our haplessly sublimated fury toward a quotidian world gone brutal. If Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Robot Chicken seem loosely adapted from manic, late-night culture riffs fueled by junk food and overworked/underpaid exhaustion, Tim embodies the brittle, belittling daytime awkwardness of our dead-end corporate jobs and mind-numbingly mundane relationships—a stunting reality we can only greet with a deadpan shrug and a two-day goatee. And so what if the show’s situational apparatus is often merely comic rather than actually funny? (Though, admittedly, the idea of a co-worker writing off prostitutes as a business expense by forging Kinko’s receipts inspires a newfound form of admirable laughter.) Who can afford hilarity in this economy anyway?