There are similar moments, some quiet, and hard to watch—she’s especially good with Tennant, who we’ll return to in a moment—but they’re depressingly rare. The rest is all blitzing through paragraphs about Instagram followers and detailed schedules and chronic pain and pelvic floors and near-constant assertions that everyone around her is constantly ruining her life, at every moment. When one line would get the point across—“Checking in, eight adults one child four nights at the Groupon rate,” in one breath, to the campground’s bemused proprietor (Bridget Everett)—there are usually four, and at least half are gruesomely on the nose. On “Alias,” Garner successfully sold the Rambaldi mythology, which involved Da Vinci and big red floating balls of goo. She got four Emmy nominations for that show. She can’t even kind of make this junk work.

Others fare better. The only remotely shaky thing about Tennant’s performance is his often comically thick American accent; in all other respects, he carefully crafts a portrayal of a loving, supportive man who is just about at the end of his gosh-darned rope and completely unsure of how to handle that. As the similarly put-upon Nina-Joy, Bravo gets to play something like the straight man, but instead of being the solid wall off which jokes can bounce, she’s the reasonably sane, clear-eyed person who reaffirms that yes, this is all crazy. She does it all with appealing reserve and emotional resonance. The same is true of Chris Sullivan’s Joe, who imbues his spiraling jackass with enough vulnerability and self-loathing to avoid making him another loathsome object. And while there’s nothing subtle about it, Lewis’ turn as the wild Jandice is so damned entertaining that it’s hard not to hunger for more. She’s occasionally funny, bless the Lord, but more importantly, she’s a force, an energy. Jandice enters the frame and things change.

“Camping” seemingly never stops, never shuts up, and yet somehow it still takes a good long while before it seems to be getting anywhere. Yet paradoxically, the slowest moments are the ones in which the best of the series seems to emerge. It’s not just that the acting is best in those quiet moments. When the characters take a breath, a real sense of place seeps in between the sentences. Directors Konner, John Riggi, and Wendey Stanzler—the last of whom directed the “Parks and Recreation” episode “Flu Season,” one of the best sitcom outings of the century so far—each evocatively capture the vast, dark, loud-quietness of a campground after dark, while Stanzler in particular makes every beige tent feel insanely cramped and small. In the former case, the cameras wander down paths, creeping up on the characters or catching sight of them from a distance. In the latter, it’s always crammed in somehow, one more unwelcome presence in a space that’s way too small to contain such uncomfortable people.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmrKyimq6utc2gZqGan6h6pLvMnpuyZaOav6qx0maamqWgnruoecisZJqmXaq7sbjEmqqapqRiwbO1zw%3D%3D