I Just Want My Pants Back

Now a new MTV series, from acclaimed director and executive producer Doug Liman (“Mr. and Mrs. Smith, “Swingers,” “Go,” “The Bourne Identity”) Jason Strider is a twentysomething young man with an English degree from an Ivy League university, a very small apartment in New York, a vapid job as a receptionist at a casting agency—and no particular idea what to do with his life. On most evenings he gets stoned and goes out, sometimes with his long-time best friend and wingman Tina and sometimes alone, if not to get laid then at least to get hammered enough to really regret it the next day and be late for work. Then one night Jason has athletic, appliance-assisted intercourse with a cute girl named Jane—and ends up lending her his favorite Dickies jeans. Many unanswered e-mails and text messages later, he is reduced to the plaint “I just want my pants back.” How he does, in a most unexpected way, find those pants and how he is forced to face his immaturity—and mortality—are at the heart of this smart, raunchily comic and deeply affecting novel.