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‘Dave’ Featurette: Season 2 of FXX Show Digs Deeper, Goes Darker

The second season of "Dave" touches on the darker elements of the music industry and how they influence the series' titular character.
DAVE "Antsy” Episode 2 (Airs Wednesday, June 16) -- Pictured: Dave Burd as Dave. CR: Byron Cohen/FX
Dave Burd in "Dave"
Byron Cohen / FX

Dave” is still a comedy series with a lot of goofy punchlines, but the FXX show is digging deeper into the consequences of its namesake character’s quest for music superstardom in Season 2.

FX recently unveiled a featurette for “Dave” following its Season 2 premiere on June 16. The series centers on Dave (Dave Burd, who co-created the show and stars as a fictionalized version of himself), a neurotic up-and-coming rapper who aims to make it big in the industry.

“At the end of Season 1 Dave broke up with Ally because he chose his career over Ally,” series co-creator Jeff Schaffer said in the featurette. “He couldn’t have both. He got what he wanted more than anything, which was legitimacy. How do you get legitimacy? By getting your own record deal. He got a record deal and it’s not what he thought it was at all.”

That lust for fame, and the consequences of Dave’s single-minded efforts to achieve it, are some of the driving forces behind Season 2 of the FXX show. Series supervising producer and writer Vanessa McGee noted in the featurette that though “Dave” still has plenty of comedy, the show also touches on some of the heavier elements that define the entertainment industry and how they impact Dave and the people he surrounds himself with.

“Season 2 has a lot of grounded moments,” McGee said in the featurette. “We’re striving more to touch on the uncertainties, the darker things about this dream that Dave is chasing. It is a little bit darker but is still lighthearted in the way that Dave Burd is in real life.”

“Dave” has been a ratings hit for FXX and has enjoyed a strong critical reception. IndieWire’s Ben Travers praised “Dave” Season 2 as “excellent and severe” in his grade B+ review of the season. “Season 2 doesn’t satirize its lead or make him into a full-blown antihero,” he wrote. “It can be hard to spend time with him, just as it’s hard to watch anyone make careless mistake after careless mistake, but these first five episodes posit him as the (atypical) oblivious white guy — the one who knows he needs to be seen as an anti-racist, but isn’t invested enough to be anything more than ‘not a racist.’ That shows in how he treats his friends, and it shows in how he sees himself. Dave constantly demands to be taken seriously; that he’s not a parody act or a comedian, but a real rapper. And yet he’s unable to see that his rhythm and rhymes don’t carry significance just because he’s got talent. He has to have something to say.”

Check out the featurette on “Dave” Season 2 below:

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