The Life & Times of Tim follows the misadventures of Tim (voiced by Steve Dildarian), a young man who lives in New York City. Tim is constantly getting into trouble as he either puts his foot in his mouth or he tries to do the right thing by helping someone and everything backfires. He has a tolerant girlfriend named Amy (voiced by M.J. Otto) and his best friend is Stu (voiced by Nick Kroll), who likes to go by the name "Stu Balls". After separating for a time, Tim and Amy got back together during Season Two. However, that season ended in an odd fashion as Tim lost his job at Omnicorp and decided that he wanted to become a novelist. As Season Three opens, Tim has taken a job as the personal assistant to professional basketball player Tanya Miller (voiced by Kym Whitley), a fact which he's hidden from Amy. He's remained in contact with his co-workers from Omnicorp, although most dislike him due to some comments which he made. As the season progresses, Tim will once again become gainfully employed and he will continue to test the limits of his relationship with Amy and most anyone around him.

Season Two of The Life & Times of Tim focused on Tim's life at work and his on-again/off-again relationship with Amy. These may sound like some very stereotypical "sitcommy" things, but the show made them work because it attacked them in its own weird way. Being on HBO, the show can get as vulgar as it pleases and it would often go to bizarre places to take the everyday and completely turn it on its ear. Comedy is all about the element of surprise and these shows would take the viewer in a familiar direction and then totally go off of the map.

Speaking of maps, Season Three of The Life & Times of Tim seems to have completely lost its way. The series has never been known for its strong plotting and story arcs (that's honestly not what it's meant to be), but Season Three feels very episodic and it never finds any real groove. The season opens with Tim already employed by Tanya Miller and it doesn't gel at all with the finale of Season Two. I honestly stopped watching the DVD and went online to do research to make sure that I hadn't missed a special or a season or something. The stories offered here are very random and hit or miss, as they function solely as the motivation for Tim's next mistake and only build upon one another when it's convenient for them. This does make the series easy for newcomers to jump into, but when you watch them back-to-back, as I did for this review, the lack of cohesiveness wears thin.

And then we have the comedy in Season Three. Again, Season Two was (somewhat) more grounded in reality and thus could derive humor from that. Season Three reverts back to the approach of Season One and decides that placing Tim in the most shocking and awkward situations is the way to go. I don't look to a show like The Life & Times of Tim for realism, but things get so skewed in Season Three that it's often hard to relate to the show in any way. Tim has always found ways to let small situations completely blow up in his face, but in this season, Tim is much more aggressive, and frankly, much more of a jerk and he often seems to be trying to cause trouble, as opposed to being an innocent bystander. Yes, it was incredibly formulaic, but the show was much better when Tim was simply a guy whose attempts at doing the right thing got out of hand. Season Three finds Tim as more of a troublemaker and we can't believe that Amy doesn't kick him out here for some of things which he does, given that she did it in the past.

Does Season Three of The Life & Times of Tim offer some laughs? Sure it does, most of which come from Stu. However, the number of laugh-out-loud moments and quotable lines has really dropped off from Season Two. My wife wound up watching most of that season with me, as it was actually funny. She bailed out just a few episodes into Season Three, as the series now seemed to be trying to push viewers away. I'm now truly on the fence with this series and the bad new is that Season Three ends with a cliffhanger worthy of a prime-time soap, so I know that I will at least be watching the first episode a Season Four (assuming this materializes) to see what happens.

The Life & Times of Tim: The Complete Third Season reinforces the importance of Jenga on DVD courtesy of HBO Home Video. The two DVD set contains all 10 episodes of the show's third season. The episodes has been letterboxed at 1.78:1 and the transfer is enhanced for 16 x 9 TVs. The image is sharp and clear, showing no grain and no defects from the source material. The show is known for its low-tech animation, which looks fine here. The transfer does highlight the lack of detail in some of the drawings and there is some mild stuttering to some of the animation. The colors look good and the image is never overly dark or bright. The DVD carries a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track which provides clear dialogue and sound effects. This track, like the animation, is very low-key and most of the audio comes from the front and center channels. I got some vague crowd noise from the rear channels at times, but we mostly get dialogue from the center.

The Life & Times of Tim: The Complete Third Season DVD set contains no extra features.