‘House of Lies’ season 2, episode 3 review: Running out of luck

Does anyone else get the feeling that “House of Lies” season 2 thus far has basically been akin to watching “Ocean’s Thirteen” with Don Cheadle all over again? You have wealthy tycoons in Las Vegas, nightclubs about crazy things, and of course an elaborate scheme designed to utilize false pretenses to make a ton of money.

For Sunday night’s new episode, we finally saw Marty and the firm snatch up a client for his social-media casino idea after Pincus originally balked on the idea … though this one also took a little bit of convincing. It took dealing with some underlings before the wealthy Mr. Carlson even bothered to give him the time of day. So with a client finally in place, the quest for the rest of the season is making sure that they can at least deliver to a certain extent on their promise.

As for the rest of the story, it’s hard to really elaborate too much on it. Jeannie continue to deny that she had any feelings left for Marty, even though she realized through another female employee that it was perfectly understandable that there would be feelings there. Meanwhile, we had the classic case of someone getting a happy ending in a massage parlor, and then getting upset when another masseuse does not give him the same thing later. This would have been funnier had the joke been even remotely new.

The issue three episodes into “House of Lies” is that when comparing it to another premium cable comedy at the moment in HBO’s “Girls,” this show doesn’t always stack up. While there are a fair share of clever moments and quality jokes, the characters are just too vapid to really want to root for any of them. There is such a disconnect in rooting for characters in such little vulnerabilities, and there are not enough differences between one member of the firm and another to give you that sort of layered interaction that you would want from a comedy.

Thus, this remains a fine example of a show that could be very funny, but is still a few elements away from getting there.

Do you disagree, and is this season even funnier to you than the last one? If you want to read some more news pertaining to “House of Lies,” you can find it over at the link here.

Photo: Showtime