Will Arnett
Chip
Overview
In his funky California beach enclave, Chip's the go-to guy for personal insights. But he isn't quite as enlightened when it comes to his own baggage.
Seasons
- Status
- Canceled
- Seasons
- 2 seasons
- Episodes
- 14 episodes
- First aired
- Mar 11, 2016
Cast
Reviews
4 min readBeach Advice, Bad Weather
What I remember most about Flaked is not its plot mechanics but its weather. The show lives in that particular California light that makes everything look forgiven for about ten minutes, even when nobody has actually earned forgiveness. latestnetflix.com's read is that Will Arnett’s Chip moves through that world like a man who has confused spaciousness with wisdom.
He sits on porches, perches on barstools, and offers up little fragments of insight to the people around him, always with the faint air of someone who’s read enough self-help to become fluent in apology without ever becoming good at it.
That’s the joke, of course. But it’s also the point. Flaked arrived in 2016, when “prestige comedy” had already turned melancholy into a house style, and when male stasis — especially the kind padded with wit, charm, and booze — was practically its own genre. The series comes out of the same broader conversation as Louie, Californication, Master of None, and the many shows that ask whether a man can turn his own aimlessness into a moral philosophy.
Sometimes the answer is yes, but only because the people around him are too polite to interrupt. I can’t think of many shows that so casually turn “I’m figuring myself out” into a form of social damage.
What gives the series some bite is that it doesn’t let Chip’s self-awareness count as growth. He’s a relapse-ready guru, which is a fun role for Arnett, whose voice alone can make a sentence sound either confessional or like a lie told under oath. By the time he made Flaked, Arnett had spent years playing men who weaponize deadpan — from Arrested Development’s G.O.B. to the bruised vanity of later comic turns — and here he lets that persona curdle into something smaller and sadder.
Chip doesn’t swagger so much as hover. His shoulders have the slack, apologetic posture of a man who’s always half-listening to his own excuses. It’s a smart use of Arnett’s instrument: that velvet gravel of a voice becomes less a source of authority than a cover story.
Audience Opinions
Broad evidence
Audience 5.9/10
"Will Arnett's half-hour drama Flaked draws a decidedly mixed response, settling into modest audience ratings rather than widespread acclaim."
Audiences approaching the series encounter a half-hour drama anchored by Will Arnett that stirs divided reactions. While international viewers on community platforms rate the production around a 5.9 out of 10 across more than a thousand votes, [latestnetflix.com]( read is that the compact dramatic format offers an understated tone that works for some character-piece enthusiasts but leaves broader crowds largely lukewarm.
What viewers praise
- Concise Half-Hour Format The 30-minute episode length delivers a focused dramatic runtime centered around Will Arnett.
Common complaints
- Middling Viewer Engagement Audience sentiment remains distinctly average, marked by a middling 5.9/10 score across hundreds of viewer votes.
Recommended for
Followers of Will Arnett exploring his dramatic side Viewers interested in short-form half-hour dramas
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsHe quoted the tweets before the water arrived.
Venice restaurant Gjelina, early March 2016. Will Arnett sat down, buried his face, and started reciting the reviews for Flaked, the Netflix series he had poured his own sobriety into. One tweet stung enough to repeat out loud. "From Arrested to BoJack to this?" latestnetflix.com's take is that a shaming question, he told The Hollywood Reporter, as if he had signed a contract to stay Gob forever.The show dropped the next day. 
Chip is a Venice guru on a bicycle, a furniture guy with a stool award and a drink he will not admit. Ruth Kearney plays London, the waitress Chip and his best friend Dennis both want. David Sullivan is Dennis. George Basil is Cooler. Heather Graham turns up as Chip's estranged actress wife Tilly. Kirstie Alley plays Dennis's mother Jackie. Stephen Malkmus wrote the music. Wally Pfister, the Inception cinematographer, directed the opening run. Mitch Hurwitz, Ben Silverman, and Peter Principato executive produced with Arnett and co-creator Mark Chappell. Netflix had ordered eight episodes in January 2015 as a passion project, Arnett's third Netflix job after BoJack Horseman and the Arrested Development revival. 
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The first day of shooting was meant to land on Arnett's fifteenth year sober. The idea had arrived in summer 2012, when his marriage to Amy Poehler was coming apart and NBC's Up All Night was dying. He wrote Chip from "things that I loathed in other people." Then the lines blurred. "As I was writing all this shit and I start shooting it, I started getting confused about where I was at," he told THR. "Hardly anybody knows this, but I started drinking again." He tried telling himself he needed the slip to play Chip. He hated how it felt. "I was filled with shame." A friend he had once helped get sober pulled him back. If the show got a second season, he said, Chip would ask Dennis for the same help. ,
Critics did not wait. Rotten Tomatoes logged season one at 35 percent, consensus that the man-child persona was no longer compelling. Variety's Brian Lowry called it flavorless. Vox's Emily VanDerWerff wrote that stupid plot twists ruined it, including London hunting the man who killed her brother in a crash. Arnett heard a reviewer say CBS's Mom did sobriety better. "This is actually happening to me, you asshole," he told THR. "This is actually happening in real time." Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos still called the sharing impressive. , , ,
Six more episodes, then Venice went quiet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT6wtBJsgyU
Netflix skipped Flaked in its TCA renewal list, then posted on the show's Facebook page in July 2016. "We're headed back to Venice for Flaked Season 2. Can we stay in your guest house?" Variety confirmed six episodes for 2017, down from eight. They arrived 2 June. Chip comes home after a short exile as persona non grata. No store, no friends, no guest house. Elisabeth Rohm and Lenora Crichlow joined. Arnett even directed an episode. TMDB now lists the series canceled. Fourteen episodes, two seasons, and a man who put his relapse on a streaming calendar. , , ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.