The Terrible Catsafterme

SEASON 1 – HBO

Created by Jonathan Ames

Theme music: “Bored to Death” written by Jason Schartzman and Jonathan Ames and performed by Coconut Records, with lead vocals by Jason Schwartzman. 

• 001. Stockholm Syndrome – 9/20/2009
  • Jonathan Ames (Jason Schwartzman) is an aspiring writer living in Brooklyn who has published one book and is working as a journalist for Edition magazine. His girlfriend Suzanne (Olivia Thirlby) leaves him because of his addiction to pot and white wine. In a funk, he puts an ad on Craigslist identifying himself as a private detective. Sullen about the breakup, he attempts to talk to his friend Ray Hueston (Zach Galifianakis), a comic book artist, but he has relationship problems of his own with his girlfriend Leah (Heather Burns). His boss George Christopher (Ted Danson), a well-known liberal figure in the city and editor of Edition, uses Jonathan as his supplier of pot. Soon a call comes in from a girl named Rachel Klein (Ryena de Courcy) searching for her missing sister Lisa (Fiona Dourif). Jonathan tracks down her boyfriend and finds the sister there, tied up on the bed. The police show up, but the girl claims that it was consensual, so it is Jonathan who is arrested. He is let go with the warning to stop impersonating a private detective, but soon enough, another call comes in from a potential client. 5/4/13
• 002. The Alanon Case – 9/27/2009
  • An alcoholic woman named Jennifer Gladwell (Kristen Wiig) hires Jonathan to find out if her boyfriend Gary (Peter Hermann) is cheating or not. Jonathan first follows him to a gym and questions him, then follows him to an Alanon meeting. Much to his surprise, he sees Gary leave with his own ex-girlfriend Suzanne. Jonathan confronts them both in a diner, and ends up getting in a fistfight with Gary, who claims he is just comforting his new friend Suzanne. He reports to his client that Gary was not cheating after all. Meanwhile, Ray gets a colonic and George gets herpes on his lip and asks Jonathan to punch him in order to obscure the sore on his lip. The ruse doesn’t work, and his herpes is splashed on the headlines of the local paper. Jonathan takes his earnings and gets a colonic as well. 5/4/13
• 003. The Case of the Missing Screenplay – 10/4/2009
  • George invites Jonathan to attend a party with the purpose of letting him meet director Jim Jarmusch (as himself), who is interested in Jonathan’s writing and wants him to re-write a screenplay. Jonathan gets a treatment of the screenplay with his misspelled name plastered on it. He also meets an attractive younger woman named Claudia (Vanessa Ray), but it is not until he gets back to her dad’s psychiatrist office and starts making out with her that he finds out that she’s only sixteen. He immediately flees, but not before her father (Denis O’Hare) barges in and Ray, in a rush to get out, leaves behind the screenplay which has fallen behind the couch. Initially he sends Ray in to try and retrieve it, but Ray, who is considering donating sperm to a lesbian couple, gets too caught up in the therapy and forgets about the screenplay. Jonathan then visits the doctor posing as a patient, but the father has found the screenplay and is on to the ruse. He returns the screenplay and punches Jonathan in the stomach. He is also too late for Jarmusch, who has hired Charlie Kauffman to do the re-write. Meanwhile George runs into his ex-wife Priscilla (Laila Robins) and her boyfriend Richard Antrem (Oliver Platt), the editor of GQ magazine. He is shaken up enough to start an affair with a much younger woman named Miriam (Jessica Blank).  7/9/13
• 004. The Case of the Stolen Skateboard – 10/11/2009
  • Leah hooks Jonathan up with a case with her friend Michelle (Parker Posey) to help her find her son’s stolen skateboard. He immediately develops a crush on her, and they kiss, which inspires him to work extra hard to find the skateboard. He eventually tracks it down but is intimidated by the bully (E.J. Bonilla) who stole it, so he swipes it from him and is chased by a mob of the bully’s friends back to the car driven by Ray. They barely get away at the time, but they are later found by the bullies who break the window of a new restaurant where Jonathan and George are attending its premiere so that George can impress a young girl. When Jonathan returns the skateboard to Michelle, he is disappointed to find out that she is no longer interested in him. Meanwhile, Ray has agreed to donate sperm to a lesbian couple, much to Leah’s chagrin. Bebe Neuwirth plays Jonathan’s agent Caroline, who is pressuring him to submit a manuscript for a second novel that he has promised.  7/9/13
• 005. The Case of the Lonely White Dove – 10/18/2009
  • Jonathan is hired by a Russian ex-con named Dimitri (Lev Gorn) to find an old one-night stand known only as the Lonely White Dove, a dancer at a Russian bar in Brighton Beach. He ends up getting drunk on vodka and having a great time when he visits there but needs to go back the next night to interview a dancer known as the Lonely Sparrow, who turns out to be the same girl. He brings along Suzanne in an attempt to woo her back with the understanding that he will not drink. Ray and Leah tag along as well. Jonathan gets thrown out of the club by the bouncers for asking too many questions, but the Lonely Sparrow (Branka Katic) agrees to meet him later and eventually asks for a meeting with Demitri. When Jonathan brings Dimitri to their meeting spot, the club bouncers attack him and beat him up because he had gotten the Sparrow’s brother into trouble as well. Jonathan uses Ray’s brass knuckles to save Demitri from the attack. Meanwhile, George decides to experiment with bisexuality in order to attract more readers to his Encore Magazine and hires a male escort (Romany Malco). 7/20/13
• 006. The Case of the Beautiful Blackmailer – 10/25/2009
  • A distraught married man named Mr. Eaton (Geoffrey Cantor) hires Jonathan to retrieve a sex tape that a woman named Sophia (Trieste Kelly Dunn) is using to blackmail him. Jonathan, posing as a married man, lures Sophia to meet with him at a motel as well. Jonathan has sex with her and feels a connection with her, but she ultimately demands money from him as well. When Jonathan reveals that he is really not married, a man (Peter Conboy) enters the room and violently demands money. Ray and George, who are supposed to be keeping a watch out at the motel, have gotten stoned and are completely oblivious to the man attacking, and then chasing, Jonathan. They track Sophia to her home and Jonathan demands the tape with a threat to call the police. She gives him the tape and his money back, but just then the man who is revealed to be her gambling debt-ridden brother arrives at her house and chases the guys in his car. Ray runs smack into the back of a police car and all three men are arrested but are safe from the brother. George agrees to publish some of Ray’s cartoons in his magazine to help him pay for the damages. Patton Oswalt stars as Howard Baker, the proprietor of a spy store where Jonathan buys his equipment. 7/20/13
• 007. The Case of the Stolen Sperm – 11/1/2009
  • Ray worries when the lesbians to whom he is giving his sperm seem to vanish without a trace. He enlists Jonathan to help find them and a visit to their abandoned apartment reveals that they have been selling his sperm to other lesbian couples. When they visit these women, whose names were found on a list, none of them seem to be pregnant, so Ray worries that he cannot conceive a baby. However, the last couple they visit are pregnant – so even though they are quite disappointed that Ray is the father, Ray is relieved. In the process of tracking down the lesbians, Jonathan meets a woman named Stella (Jenny Slate), who shares his love of marijuana and the two begin to date. Meanwhile, George has a run-in with Richard, which leads him to write a scathing review of Richard in his magazine. Richard challenges George to a boxing match which he accepts. In addition, they set up a triple bout match with Jonathan book reviewer Louis Green (John Hodgman) and Ray fighting the magazine’s cartoonist. Samantha Bee plays Renee. The episode is to be continued… 7/21/13
• 008. Take a Dive – 11/8/2009
  • Jonathan continues to date Stella and eventually sleeps with her. He also receives an anonymous phone call blackmailing him to take a dive in the boxing match, or else he will expose the fact that George has been taking Viagra. Jonathan tracks down the caller and finds out that it was Louis who hired him. George has a meeting with Priscilla, who sleeps with him and asks that he take a dive in the fight because her boyfriend Richard has a heart condition. When the night of the match comes, Ray is defeated quickly by artist Francis Hamm (Michael Chernus), although Francis is a fan of Ray’s and would have preferred to not only lose but be hurt by Ray. This works out for Ray though because it sexually arouses his girlfriend, Leah. Jonathan is able to defeat Louis, and George takes a dive as requested by Priscilla. Jonathan is happy that Stella has attended the match, but she tells him that they’ll have to wait a while to see each other as she’s contracted a urinary tract infection. 7/21/13

SEASON 2

• 009. Escape from the Dungeon – 9/26/2010
  • Taking time out from teaching a writing workshop and continuing to date Stella, Jonathan takes a case from a mounted police officer named Officer Drake (Lenny Venito) to wipe a hard drive in an S&M dungeon that the officer has been frequenting. He successfully completes the wipe but has to go through some light sexual torture from a Mistress Florence (Kristen Johnson). While he is there, the place is raided and he is forced to flee while locked inside a leather outfit. He runs to George, who is in the middle of meeting with the bored of directors for Extreme Magazine to plead against magazine cutbacks. Meanwhile, after attending a yoga class with Ray who doesn’t take it seriously, Leah breaks up with him. Mary Kay Place stars as Kathryn. 12/25/13
• 010. Make It Quick, Fitzgerald! – 10/3/2010
  • Richard hires Jonathan to spy on Priscilla to see if she’s having an affair. She is, and it is with her ex-husband George, who is having troubles of his own with soreness in his penis, bedbugs, and a new female urologist named Donna Kenwood (Jessica Hecht). While hiding in Richard’s closet while George and Priscilla are having sex, he covers for George until Richard decides to come home, and all parties meet in the bedroom. On the relationship front, Jonathan becomes insecure when Stella announces that she wants to have an open relationship and a three-way with her ex-boyfriend Warren (Josh Gad), and Ray tries to win Leah back, only to find a naked man named Irwin (Jonathan Ames) in her bed and chases him out. 12/25/13
• 011. The Gowanus Canal Has Gonorrhea! – 10/10/2010
  • George is told by Donna that he has stage 2 prostate cancer and the two then begin an affair. Jonathan’s night is not going much better when Stella breaks up with him to go back with Warren, and then is kidnapped by a pair of thugs Jim and Eric (Jim Norton, Domenick Lombardozzi) who want the hard drive that Jonathan stole from the S&M dungeon. When Jonathan tells them that he destroyed it, they demand a $20,000 ransom. He calls a stoned George, who brings along Ray as well as some non-lethal weapons that he buys from his friend Howard. When they try their ambush, George ends up shooting Ray with a rubber bullet and they get caught by the kidnappers. Jonathan turns to his parents Ira and Florence (Richard Masur, Allyce Beasley) who pay $2000 for the ransom. The thugs are irritated but they accept the money and leave. Ray and Jonathan pledge their support to George, and Mrs. Ames makes them breakfast. Murray Hill and Julie Atlas Muz perform as themselves. 1/14/14
• 012. I’ve Been Living Like a Demented God! – 10/17/2010
  • Jonathan is hired by Professor Richard Hawkes (F. Murray Abraham) to retrieve a copy of On the Road signed by Jack Kerouac that he used to pay off a thousand-dollar drug debt, not knowing its 75K value. Jonathan follows Hawkes’ dealer, and in turn is followed by his nemesis Louis. Both are caught looking in the window, but Jonathan manages to grab a bag of pot and the book and he and Louis escape and are pursued. When Louis gets injured during the run, Jonathan has to leave him behind – but returns to beat off all three drug dealers with a branch, thus saving Louis’ life. Ray runs into Leah, and then finds out that his comic book is making good money. To both lament and celebrate, he goes for drinks a meets Jennifer Gladwell, with whom he starts an affair. George is randomly drug tested and despite filling his urine with water and soap, he tests positive for high quantities of THC. His boss Kathryn threatens to send him to rehab, but when he tells her that he has cancer, she has mercy on him. 1/14/14
• 013. Forty-Two Down! – 10/24/2010
  • Jonathan is hired by an Indian woman named Lakshmi (Sarita Choudhury) to follow her husband Vikram (Ajay Naidu) because she thinks he is having an affair. It turns out that he has lost his job as a limo driver and is ashamed to face his wife. Jonathan advises him to tell her, but when he does, she is angrier than if he was having an affair. George’s boss Kathryn suggests that the magazine do away with his column By George; this depresses him and causes him to give a depressing talk to Jonathan’s class.  George is also worried that he has become addicted to marijuana and his driving is suffering. Jonathan suggests that he offer Vikram a job as his driver, but when they go to see him, they find that he is robbing a diner. George makes his job offer and the three escape together. Meanwhile Ray breaks it off with Jennifer and has a meeting with Kevin Bacon (as himself), who wants to play Super Ray on screen. When Jennifer shows up, she ruins their meeting and Ray storms off. Jonathan’s student Nina (Zoe Kazan) makes a pass at him, but it is interrupted by George. 2/3/14
• 014. The Case of the Grievous Clerical Error! – 10/31/2010
  • George goes in for surgery to have his prostate removed and shares a moment with his ex-wife Priscilla, getting caught by his current girlfriend Donna – who is also the doctor who is going to perform the surgery – causing them to break up. Jonathan figures out why the nurse has been calling George by the wrong name, when George’s case file is actually for another man. It turns out George doesn’t actually have prostate cancer and Jonathan is able to stop the surgery in the nick of time. Meanwhile, Leah hires Jonathan to find her missing dog Ray Jr., and a stoned Jonathan almost kisses her. Ray, who has been dating a fangirl with elf ears named Sherri (Kate Miccuci), joins him in helping to recover the dog from a man who is keeping nearly a dozen stolen dogs – all based on a tip-off from a lady named Belinda (Olympia Dukakis). Ray hopes to reconcile with Leah and overlooks it when Jonathan admits that they almost kissed. When Ray returns Ray Jr., she is appreciative, but nothing becomes of it. 2/3/14
• 015. Escape from the Castle! – 11/7/2010
  • Jonathan accepts a task from Dr. O’Connor (Frank Wood), a virgin dermatologist who wants to get a letter to his fiancée Hee Cho (Jake Manabat), who is being hid away by her family at an Asian Health Spa. He decides to treat Ray to the spa for his birthday and they bring George and his new chauffeur Vikram along. Before Jonathan leaves, he shares a kiss with Nina, and she immediately wants him to spank her, but still wants to take the relationship ‘slow’. At the spa, Jonathan gets the letter to Hee Cho, but it turns out that Hee Cho is actually a transvestite man, who is being chased by family members whom he stole money from. George and Vikram fight off the attackers using shovels. Hee Cho and Dr. O’Connor are reunited, and O’Connor reveals that he knew that Hee Cho was a man all along. Louis Greene wins out over Jonathan in a writing contest for New Yorker magazine with a short story about Jonathan. 3/5/14
• 016. Super Ray Is Mortal! – 11/14/2010
  • After sleeping with Jonathan on their first date, Nina asks to move in with him. Ray is freaked out because he is getting emails from a stalker and finds a Super Ray doll with a vagina and an Exacto knife nib in the shoulder left in his apartment vestibule. Jonathan turns to Officer Drake to assist in finding the IP address that the notes were sent from. They track it to a hostel and find the perpetrator thanks to the help of the concierge (Matthew Maher), but he escapes and Jonathan twists his ankle. Meanwhile, George is forced by Kathryn to see a drug counselor (Jim Gaffigan) who recommends that he go to rehab in Arizona. That, combined with the right wing direction the magazine is taking, causes him to quit. Kathryn asks him out on a date. Jonathan also competes for a job at Midwood College with Louis Greene and they ultimately get in a fight in Dean Saunders’ (John Rothman) office. Jonathan doesn’t get the job. Later at the Comic Con, the stalker stabs Ray with the Exacto knife and he is revealed to be Irwin, the man with whom Leah slept. Jonathan chases him down and subdues him while George hits on a woman dressed as Wonder Woman. Leah comes to see Ray in the hospital and the two reconcile. George and Jonathan contemplate going to Tangiers or Brazil, but ultimately decide to stay in Brooklyn for the evening and get stoned.  3/6/14

SEASON 3

• 017. The Blonde in the Woods – 10/10/2011
  • Jonathan signs copies of his new book The Blonde in the Woods and then attends a dinner with his parents, Ray & Leah, and George, where Ray reveals that the lesbians to whom he donated his sperm have divorced and he will now be getting visitation with his son Spencer once a week. Jonathan’s father then reveals to him that he was actually conceived with a sperm donor so his father is not really his father. Ray spends a day with Spencer, and despite a few obstacles – like putting whiskey on his nipple and nursing him – he falls in love with his son. George meets up with his daughter Emily (Halley Feiffer) whom he hasn’t seen in two years and finds out that she’s in AA and is dating a man named Bernard (David Rasche), who wants to marry her. Jonathan is hired to follow a woman with a yellow hat named Kitty (Amy Spanger) and tracks her to a hotel room. When he breaks in, he is hit on the head and wakes up holding a gun with a dead man named Schwartz (Eric Deskin) in the room. The police pursue him and he climbs out the window, hangs from a giant clock hand, and phones Ray. NOTE: This episode is the first of two parts. 6/1/14
• 018. Gumball! – 10/17/2011
  • Ray helps Jonathan down from the clock and escape from the police, and they spend the night at George’s house. The next morning the police show up, but Jonathan and Ray escape in the dumbwaiter. George gets stoned and feels like everyone he encounters is following him. Jonathan and Ray visit Howard to get pilot disguises, and find the home of the client who had contacted him. There he comes across Kitty, who claims that her boyfriend Sid (Danny Rutigliano) had murdered Schwartz because he was having an affair with Kitty, and that he threatened to kill her if she told. She tells Jonathan that Sid is running the Prospect Park Carousel and they go after him. George joins them and they apprehend Sid, but then Kitty shows up and shoots him. She had actually been involved in the plot to kill Schwartz and get the insurance money he had left for her. She tries to kill everyone but they jump on the carousel and the police show up…along with everyone whom George had thought was following him. Ray tries to talk Jonathan into retiring from the detective business, but he says that he still has to find his real father. 6/1/14
• 019. The Black Clock of Time – 10/24/2011
  • Jonathan is booked to appear on The Dick Cavett Show to promote his book The Blonde in the Woods. It turns out that the guest to follow him on the show is Louis, there to promote his book The Black Clock of Time – which is constantly mispronounced. Jonathan is nervous at first and watches old videos of Robert Mitchum on the show and tries to emulate him. He and Dick end up having a great rapport when Jonathan starts talking about how he is searching for his real father. Louis gets bumped as a guest and attempts to pull the curtain on the show, but ends up nearly killing Dick Cavett (himself), who is saved by Jonathan’s tackle. Meanwhile Emily announces that she and Bernard have become engaged, before George can give his permission. Ray takes Spenser to a park and meets up with a breastfeeding support group and accidentally takes the wrong child home. The mother (Ashlie Atkinson) panics and calls the police when she finds illustrations of giant penises when she Googles Ray’s name. He is caught and thrown in jail, but is bailed out by George and Jonathan. As Ray is leaving jail, Louis is on his way in for the damage he caused on The Dick Cavett Show. 8/20/14
• 020. We Could Sing a Duet – 10/31/2011
  • George asks Jonathan to take out Emily and show her a ‘youthful’ time, hoping to dissuade her from marrying Bernard. Jonathan gets sidetracked when Emily shows him an ad from another private detective named Jonathan Ames (Brett Gelman), and they hunt him down and accompany him on a stakeout, where they try to take photos of a man who is having sex while dressed in a plush character outfit. Emily falls off the wagon when she realizes that her father is meddling in her relationship, and ends up unmasking the plush character herself, getting punched in the process. George goes out with Bernard to a new restaurant called Richard and Sons, where Richard is in fact Richard Antrem, and his busboy is Louis. Richard tries to undermine George’s restaurant, George on Jane, by touting that he gets his produce within a smaller radius. Bernard wins over George when he claims to see a rat in the restaurant and the patrons flee. George is disappointed in Jonathan’s mishandling of his date with Emily, and declares that he is taking a break from him, giving him the silent treatment. Ray is thrown out by Leah, and seeks solace in the arms of the older woman Belinda. 8/20/14
• 021. I Keep Taking Baths Like Lady MacBeth – 11/7/2011
  • George is still giving Jonathan the silent treatment, but they both agree to see a pregnant friendship counselor named Lori (Sarah Silverman) who likes to have her feet rubbed during her sessions. Jonathan tries to win George back by exposing the fact that Louis is purchasing the food for Richard’s restaurant from a grocery store. Ray helps plan a tracking device on Louis and ends up getting kissed by him. George agrees to perform in a Yale club fundraiser and takes singing lessons from a teacher named Josephine (Mary Steenburgen) but ends up smoking pot and sleeping with her. His evening with her is interrupted when Jonathan and Ray catch Louis in the act and call George. Louis steals the phone that Jonathan is filming him with, and it takes Ray’s finesse to get it back after a cart chase through the store. George shows Richard the video and he agrees to make a public retraction about his food source. George admits he’s missed his adventures with Jonathan. Meanwhile, Ray tries to break it off with Belinda when Leah returns to him. 9/18/14
• 022. Two Large Pearls and a Bar of Gold – 11/14/2011
  • As Jonathan continues to seek information about the sperm bank that burnt down, he is hired by an ex-girlfriend Patti’s (Casey Wilson) father Henry (Rene Auberjonois) to guard a family necklace that Patti will receive on her upcoming wedding day. Patti claims that she and Jonathan had made a pact to sleep together again before either got married. He thinks it’s a bad idea, but nearly goes through with it anyway while staying in her house guarding the necklace that is handcuffed to his wrist – but cannot seem to perform, after hearing about George’s issues performing with Josephine. The lights go out and Jonathan encounters a masked robber who sword fights with Jonathan and makes off with the necklace. When they bring this information to Henry, they notice that he is bleeding in the exact spot that Jonathan managed to stab him with the sword. Henry admits that he needed the money to pay for the wedding. Patti thanks Jonathan and tells him that thanks to his impotence, she now knows she wants to go through with her wedding. Meanwhile, Leah catches Ray getting a bubble bath from Belinda and throws him out, and he goes to stay with George. Jonathan receives a call from someone with information about his biological father. 9/19/14
• 023. Forget the Herring – 11/21/2011
  • A girl named Rose Hiney (Isla Fisher) contacts Jonathan after seeing him on The Dick Cavett Show because she too has been searching for her father. She has information on a man named Fishman (Chris Elliot) who she thinks was the arsonist who burned down the sperm bank. He leads them to Harrison Bergeron (Stacy Keach) at the Susquehanna Hat Company, who used to own the bank. Bergeron claims that all records were destroyed in the fire. Jonathan and Rose have a romantic ride on a Ferris Wheel at Coney Island and end up sleeping together. Meanwhile, Ray cures his back injury by sleeping on top of a book that tells how to cure your back. George tries desperately to get ahold of Emily to come see his musical performance. When she doesn’t show up, he eats a pot cookie made by Josephine and stops in the middle of his performance of The Impossible Dream, while dressed by Don Quixote, and goes to her place to serenade her. Ray also leaves and asks Leah to marry him, but she declines. Jonathan gets a call to meet Bergeron at the Brooklyn Aquarium where he tells Jonathan that he was actually one who donated all of the sperm at the bank. This also means that Rose is actually his sister. NOTE: This is the first of a two-part episode. 10/21/14
• 024. Nothing I Can’t Handle by Running Away – 11/28/2011
  • Jonathan puts off telling Rose that she is his sister, and Ray talks him into trying to have a relationship with his biological father. George tells Emily that he’s ready to accept Bernard and throw them a wedding at George on Jane. When Jonathan visits Bergeron, he gives him a gun as a gift and tells him that he is fleeing town. Two henchmen come in and take Bergeron away and Jonathan follows them. Led by a guy named Jerry (David Patrick Kelly), the gang overpowers Jonathan and tells Bergeron if he doesn’t come back with $10,000, they will kill him. Jonathan pretends to call Bergeron, but actually calls George, who is telling Josephine that he wants to be monogamous, who in turn calls Ray who is signing autographs at a comic book store. They separately head to the ballpark of the Brooklyn Wonders where Jonathan is being held; Ray is accompanied by fans dressed as Super Ray. The gang of Super Rays run away when the gang fires shots at them, but Jonathan manages to hit them all with baseball bats and disarm them with a stray gun. Meanwhile, Bergeron does in fact return to the stadium with the money. At the wedding, Jonathan opts not to tell Rose that she is his sister and they kiss as they dance to Josephine singing You Belong to Me. Ray dances with his date, an elderly woman (Lynn Cohen) who he met at the book signing. The Magnetic Fields sing Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing over the closing credits. NOTE: This is the second of a two-part episode. 10/21/14

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