So I’m going to belatedly review a bunch of shows that if they’re still on the air, won’t be for very long, and which most of you will never watch. If a show airs and no one watches it, was it ever on? Still, somebody must do the thankless jobs; attention must be paid and all that.
The titular best friends are Jessica Black (played by Jessica St. Clair) and Lennon White (Lennon Parham). Jessica is talking to Lennon via video chat as the show opens, Jessica in San Francisco, where she is awaiting the return of her husband, with whom she has apparently been having problems, and Lennon in New York. When, instead of her husband, divorce papers show up, she’s so despondent that she hops on a plane to New York and visits Lennon, who attempts to comfort her as she slips back into her old pre-marriage New York routine (apparently they lived in what is now Lennon’s apartment together). But, wait, there’s a problem! Getting in the way of the best friend Steel Magnolia viewing sessions is Lennon’s new-ish live-in boyfriend, Joe, who feels like he’s getting the squeeze now that Jessica has come to stay. He doesn’t like the way they want to spoil his chili Sundays, or move his blow up Michigan chair. Jessica doesn’t trust Joe either; upon the hilarious miscommunication plot device of finding a ring and thinking Joe is going to propose, she innately suspects that Joe is not up to the caliber of man Lennon deserves, and makes it her mission to ensure Lennon won’t be marrying this guy she simply doesn’t know enough about.
Luckily for the BFFs, crisis is averted when it turns out that the ring is not an engagement ring at all, but rather a super-sweet memento of Lennon and Joe’s first date at Medieval times, which Joe bought to remember the occasion. Jessica realizes Joe makes Lennon very happy, and that he’s a legit good guy, while Joe realizes that he needs to make room in his life for Jessica, since Jessica is so important to Lennon, and there’s a big hug at the end (I am absolutely not lying about the hug).
Oh, and in town is also a mutual friend of the crew’s named Rav, who Jessica seems to have maybe a romantic past with, which she seemingly ended. Rebound, anyone?
Wacky side character alert (I’m tempted to add this to my reviews from now on as a regular feature): The fifth main cast member is precoicious African-American 9-year old Queenetta, a neighbor who constantly hangs outside their building and apparently verbally spars with the two women. In the pilot, she criticizes Jessica’s choices of dress, particularly her khaki pants.
It’s not a terrible sitcom. We’re not in Whitney, or Last Man Standing, or 2 Broke Girls, or Are You There Chelsea territory, by any means. It’s merely the more common brand of forgettable sitcom. I hold no animus towards any of these characters, and they seem like perfectly nice people on the whole, but nor was there a whole lot to make me sad when this show inevitably dies off after five episodes of a terrible NBC time slot (trick question! All NBC time slots are terrible!). It’s worthy of a big ol’ meh.
Will I watch it again? I’m not going to. If watching it again would help get Whitney or Are You There Chelsea get cancelled, I would watch it 18 more times, but as it is, there’s just miles and miles of sitcoms to go before I sleep, and mediocrity, while not terrible, but without a spark of promise that it will develop into something really good, isn’t worth spending time on.
Television, the Drug of the Nation 