Bored to Death: Stockholm Syndrome

Numbed after his girlfriend moves out because of his repeated failure to stop drinking and smoking pot, between-books novelist Jonathan Ames (Jason Schwartzman) peruses his favorite Raymond Chandler novel, Farewell, My Lovely, and is inspired to place an ad on the Internet offering his (unlicensed) services as a private investigator. Within hours he gets his first case, involving a 19-year-old girl's desperate search for her missing sister. Despite the fact that he should be working on his second novel, and despite the fact that he is on deadline for a piece he's writing for the magazine he works for, Jonathan heads out into the urban night to track down the girl, embracing his newfound noir-detective status. At the end of a (very long) day, Jonathan earns his fee...and finds he's got another case.