I’m still a bit confused about the actual title of this show, and how many !s should be in it, and where they should be placed. So let’s just accept that I’m talking about the new Rob Schneider sitcom, in which he impulsively marries a Mexican woman, and boy does he not realize, that’s he’s married to her family also! Where Work It indulged heartily in stereotypes about women, Rob digs in to Mexican stereotypes.
Disclaimer: After writing the Work It review and this one, I do want to say, it’s not that the use of stereotypes can absolutely never ever be funny. It’s just that it’s usually not funny, and is usually terrible and offensive. I just want to leave that door open for the few who trade in this general type of humor more effectively, a la Chapelle’s Show. Stil, for ever Chapelle’s Show that does it well, there’s ten Mind of Mencias that do it terribly.
Either way, I would like to focus in on how bad Rob is as a television program.
Basically, Rob meets his wife, Maggie’s family, and while needing to impress them, constantly embarrasses himself (think Meet the Parents but with a stereotypical Mexican component). Rob was as difficult to watch as Work It, but for a very different reason. Rob basically contained the this-man-can’t-do-anything-right type of pratfalls, as he stumbled through physical comedy bits embarrassing himself, but without any of the actual laughter which comes from when this type of humor actually works. You get the hard to watch part without the funny.
Rob takes on hard hitting issues like illegal immigration, mentioning to Cheech Marin, who plays his wife’s father, that he feels that the borders should be open, while Marin responds that he wants a wall to be erected so he doesn’t have any competition. Rob mentions he’s a landscape architect to his wife’s mother, who labels him a gardener. I love that they think they’re turning stereotypes on their head, for example by showing us that these Mexicans are successful – father Cheech Marin says he owns several car washes, contrary to what us stupid Americans, who have low expectations for Mexican=-Americans, think.
There’s a lot of low brow, physical comedy. It’s not that I think all low brow comedy is unfunny, but there’s caught-in-a-situation-where-someone-mistakes-you-as-masturbating joke, and there’s a caught-in-a-situation-where-someone-mistakes-you-as-masturbating joke. Party Down manages to pull it off when goofy boss Ron gets caught trying to use a stain pen on his pants, but Rob not so much when his wife’s grandmother catches him trying to put out of the fire that has erupted on his pants when accidentally knocks over his wife’s grandmother’s devotional candles to her dead husband. Rob even follows it with an extremely creepy and terrible joke and he ends up in an awkward sexual position vis a vis the grandmother, after trying to cover her mouth to prevent her from screaming out what a mess he’s made setting the room on fire.
What’s really sad is that there is a dearth of Latin American actors on television, and likeSt. Louisdeserves better than Work It, Latin American actors and actresses deserve better than Rob.
Will I watch it again? No. Sadly, while Work It was quickly cancelled, this is on CBS, so people watch it. I look forward to never having to think about this program again, except in the litany of terrible projects Rob Schneider has been associated with. It’s amazing how the man, in a town where so many talented comedians never get a chance, manages to continue to get a work, and get a project where he gets to have an attractive, much younger wife.
(In order to meld the spirit of futile sports predictions with the high stakes world of the who-will-be-cancelled-first fall (now spring!) television season, I’ve set up a very simple system of predictions for how long new shows will last. Each day, I’ll (I’m aware I switched between we and I) lay out a network’s new shows scheduled to debut in the fall (reality shows not included – I’m already going to fail miserably on scripted shows, I don’t need to tackle a whole other animal) with my prediction of which of three categories it will fall into.
These categories are:
1. Renewal – show gets renewed
2. 13+ – the show gets thirteen or more episodes, but not renewed
3. 12- – the show is cancelled before 13
Spring note: It’s a lot harder to analyze midseason shows as there’s no collective marketing campaigns going on at one time, as many of the shows start dates are spread (or are even unannounced for some) Still, we’ll take partially educated guesses. Also, they’re a lot less likely to get partial pick ups, so maybe that trade off will make it easier)
CBS, being the all-powerful leader in television ratings, as older people simply throw out their remotes, because it’s easier to just leave their TVs on the network, has decided that the only thing missing from their line up is a Rob Schneider sitcom. Thus, because they have just one new show, we’ll be combining their preview with NBC’s.
CBS
Rob – 1/12
If not for the existence of Work It, this would have been a landmark moment for obviously terrible television. Of course, it’s on CBS, so I’d be foolish to count it out so quickly. Rob is about the comedic and charismatic Rob Schneider, who after years of bachelordom marries into a close knit Mexican-American family which happens to coincidentally conform to a number of Mexican-American stereotypes. Cheech Marin plays his father-in-law.
Verdict: 12- Please, please be right about this one. I’m sure people will watch it because it’s on but at least being on CBS means you have to beat other CBS shows to stay on, and I’m not convinced it can do that. I’ve been wrong before about CBS though and I will be again.
NBC
Smash – 2/6
NBC’s putting so much stock into this show that they’ve tried to generate good karma by naming it aspirationally. Postured as Glee for adults, Smash is about the production of a Broadway musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. American Idol’s Katherine McPhee stars as a naïve Midwesterner come to take boradway by storm as the favorite for the lead. TV veteran Debra Messing portrays one of the songwriters and Anjelica Huston plays the producer.
Verdict Renewal – the midseason show I would be most surprised by a cancellation. NBC is all in on Smash and postponement to midseason was a strategic decision rather than a lack of faith in the pilot.
Are You There Chelsea? – 1/11
Another title change, this time from Are You There Vodka, It’s Me Chelsea?, this show is based on the life of comedian Chelsea Handler, with the original title taken from her memoir, and changed because you can’t put vodka in the title of a network show for some reason. Real edgy, NBC. That 70’s Show’s Laura Prepon plays Chelsea Newman, based on Handler, while confusingly, Handler will play Chelsea’s older sister.
Verdict: 12- It could easily get renewed, because who knows, but yeah, it’s looks terrible, and slightly smarter NBC audiences have not tolerated Whitney in the past and hopefully will extend that same feeling towards Are You There Chelsea?
The Firm – 1/8
Rather than a remake of the movie, The Firm is a continuation. Set 10 years after the events in the film, The Firm explores what happens to Mr. and Mrs. McDeere after they come out of witness protection and start their own family and firm. Josh Lucas plays Mitch McDeere and Molly Parker plays his wife Abby. Much of the first season’s plot involves a battle to keep his firm independent against a takeover attempt by a shady firm.
Verdict: 12- I don’t have a whole lot of faith in this relatively gimmicky remix. Is The Firm that popular a product still in the public’s imagination even though the film was almost 20 years ago?
Bent – unscheduled
Amanda Peet stars as a recently divorced lawyer who hires a womanzing contractor to renovate her kitchen. For some reason that contractor is the other main character, and I don’t know how they would keep the contractor if the show went beyond one season (they’re probably as confident as I am that it won’t.) Jeffrey Tambor co-stars.
Verfict: 12- I feel bad because I’ve always liked Amanda Peet. It looks pretty dead in the water even if it ever makes TV.
Awake – unsecheduled
A far more interesting unscheduled show. Awake stars Jason Issacs as a police detective involved in a car accident, who upon regaining consciousness, moves back and forth between two parallel lives – one in which his son dies, and his wife lives, and one in which the opposite happens. The farther the two parallel lives more forward in time, the more they separate. It sounds like it has the potential to be the best science fiction police procedural since Life on Mars.
Verdict: 12- This seems so likely to share the same exact fate as fellow Kyle Killen show Lonestar. Rave critical reviews, but nary a chance to get on its feet and become at all popular.
Best Friends Forever – unscheduled
One old friend moves in with another after the first friend divorces her husband. This is mildly problemtic though, as the second friend’s boyfriend has just moved in and taken over the first friend’s old room. Hilarity ensues.
Verdict: 12- A fairly low premise sitcom, it’s pretty difficult just to tell from the premise how it will be. That said, I’m going to err on the side of cancelled – it is midseason after all.
A couple of months ago, I made predictions about how long new shows on CBS, NBC and The CW would last. As all the shows have aired for a few weeks, it’s time for an evaluation of my predictions, although for some shows, the final word is not in yet. Such an evaluation follows:
CBS
2 Broke Girls
Predicted: 13+
What happened: Picked up with high likelihood of renewal. I knew it was likely to get renewed, but I still tried to vote with my heart by hoping it at least wouldn’t last multiple seasons. Now, we could be looking at the next Two and a Half Men (shivers).
How To Be A Gentleman
Predicted: 12-
What happened: Cancelled. Fourth on my top five easiest cancellation decisions. Sad, because there’s a few people I like in the show, but not really sad.
Person of Interest
Predicted: Renewal
What happened: Picked up for a full season, likely to be renewed. I was worried when the show didn’t start as strong as expected, but it would be a surprise, albeit not a huge one, at this point if the show wasn’t brought back.
A Gifted Man
Predicted: 13+
What happened: Picked up for three more episodes, totally 16, leaning towards cancelled, but undecided. Probably my best 13+ pick of the year, it meets all the middle of the road commercially and critically criteria to need an extended look but ultimately be cancelled.
Unforgettable
Predicted: 13+
What happened: Picked up for a full season. Along with Terra Nova, the most borderline of the borderline. No idea which way it will go, may come down to the last minute.
NBC
Up All Night
Predicted: 13+
What happened: Picked up for a full season, still up in the air for next year. Neither a huge success nor a bust, on ratings-strapped NBC, executives are looking to grab on to anything with a chance of success (though not Community, unfortunately). It’s moving to Thursday, and how it fairs there will determine its fate. I’d lean towards renewal though.
Free Agents
Predicted: 12-
What happened: Cancelled. Number five in my most obvious cancellations of the year. There wasn’t much press, and though this was likely the best of the comedies cancelled quickly this year, that’s not saying a whole lot.
The Playboy Club
Predicted: 12-
What happened: Cancelled. I’m out of my five obvious cancellation choices, but this would be number six if I had one. It never really had a chance and it shouldn’t have.
Whitney
Predicted: 13+
What happened: Picked up for a full season, awaiting ratings on a new night. It will switch time periods with Up All Night, making much more sense for both shows. It never belonged on Thursday night, and hopefully will be put to bed by the end of the year, but it could go either way.
Prime Suspect
Predicted: Renewal
What happened: Probably cancelled, but not officially yet. I was just straight out wrong about this one. It got generally well reviewed and with NBC as ailing as it is, I thought even with middling ratings, they’d keep it around.
Grimm
Predicted: 13+
What happened: Picked up for a full season and leaning toward a renewal. I went back and forth on this show as more news and previews emerged and I’m still not sure how I feel. I think it will probably get renewed, but it’s not over yet.
CW
Ringer
Predicted: Renewal
What Happened: Picked up for full season, likely to be renewed, but not assured yet by any means. It doesn’t take too much for the WB to renew, so I think Ringer will be in.
The Secret Circle
Predicted: Renewal
What Happened: Picked up for a full season and seems most likely of all the WB shows to merit a renewal. I felt good about this choice partnered up with successful The Vampire Diaries and this just confirms it.
Hart of Dixie
Predicted: 13+
What Happened: Picked up for a full season. It’s likely to be renwed, though less likely right now than Ringer and definitely less likely than The Secret Circle. Still, I feel good about my prediction even if it comes out wrong.
Poppy Montgomery’s character Carrie Wells can never forget. No, really, she has an exceptionally rare medical condition in which she remembers EVERYTHING. She used to be a cop up in her hometown of Syracuse, but she couldn’t deal with the memory so she moved toNew York, volunteers at a nursing home and makes money counting cards at blackjack. That is, until a murder happens in her building and she runs into her old partner and lover, played by Dylan Walsh (of Nip/Tuck fame). After catching up, he convinces her against her initial resentment to help them with the case by remember some things about the murdered woman’s apartment, which Carrie had been to a few weeks before the murder. She helps them arrest one suspect, and then another more correct one and her ex eventually convinces her to come on board by showing her that she can still get closer to figuring out the one thing she can’t remember, the mysterious disappearance of her sister which she’s been trying to figure out since she joined the force years ago.
While American Horror Story was the strangest show amongst premieres, Unforgettable was probably the most predictable. It’s as close to a straight CBS procedural as there is amongst the new shows this year. Every week, there will be a crime, and Wells will consult to the police using her memory somehow to solve it (I’m not sure how they use this gimmick for twenty two cases a year, but I’m sure they’ll figure out a way). Every once in a while, we’ll see a little bit of plot movement on the serial story of her figuring out what happened to her sister, and if we get a few seasons, maybe we’ll actually find out.
It’s hard to say much about this show that goes farther than what you already know from reading the summary. It’s exactly what you think it is, and that’s neither a good nor bad thing. If you like that kind of show, if you’re always watching CBS procedurals, it’s worth at least giving a chance, and if you like the actors, you’ll like, and if it’s not your kind of show, don’t even bother.
Two quick points – first, CBS is the network forNew Yorkshows this year, and Unforgettable continues the trend of A Gifted Man and Person of Interest highlighting the fact that they’re set in NY, here with some seriousEast Rivershots. Second, there’s a flashback to when Wells is first getting together with Dylan Walsh and they play the song “It’s Been Awhile” by Staind to both represent the year (2001) and the fact that, well, it’s been a while since that scene happened. Pretty brilliant.
Will I watch it again? No, I’m not going to. I don’t watch any police procedural show on a regular basis, be it a CSI, Mentalist or NCIS. I hold absolutely no animus towards any of these shows; they’re almost all various degrees of watchable and I could do worse than spending a lazy morning hour watching Criminal Minds or an Unforgettable.
I expected How to Be A Gentleman to be truly despicably awful on the level of Whitney, but it really wasn’t on that level, it was just merely not good at all. It wasn’t cringeworthy. I didn’t have trouble getting through the show. It was just quite bad.
The premise is that David Hornby (Rickety Cricket from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) portrays an old school “gentleman” who opens doors for women and helps old ladies cross the street, and writes a column titled “How to Be A Gentleman” about well, you can figure it out. His magazine, boss Dave Foley, lets him know, has been bought and is changing its target, and if he wants to remain employed he’ll make his column young and edgy and far less Gentleman-like. Of course, he doesn’t know anything of that world. He uses a birthday gift from his sister (Mary Lynn Rajskub, or Chloe from 24) for a training session at a gym which it turns out is run by a old high school bully, Bert Lansing (Kevin Dillon, or Entourage’s Johnny Drama virtually reprising his role). Bert, feeling guilty about all the bullying years ago, is a bro, who wants to help Hornby’s character out, and Hornby, needing to learn this lifestyle for his column agrees.
It’s a CBS comedy and it feels like a CBS comedy. The laughter is canned, the angle is multi-camera, and there are slow breaks between jokes as we gather ourselves to prepare for the next one.
Even in a weak new season for comedy (New Girl is the best, and it’s not great), How To Be A Gentleman is fairly terrible. One of my issues is that it conflates being a “Gentleman” with being a total loser. I’m not sure why those things need to go together, but that seems to be what’s going on here. His family, at his birthday dinner, notes what a loser he is and how he wouldn’t have to be if he wasn’t so uptight, or in his mind, so gentlemanly. It’s kind of irritating to watch just how loser-ish he is time and again, more so than anyone would be in real life. Every character is far over the top, unrelatable, and not funny.
This is one of a mini-trend of sitcoms about emasculated men searching for manliness with ABC sitcoms Man Up and Last Man Standing. I’m really to think of a way for the trend to work, but it seems misguided from the get go.
Will I watch it again? No. I honestly wish the cast assembled had something a bit better to work with but I can’t in good conscience be wasting time with a lousy show like this when there are so many better shows on tv.
Patrick Wilson is a renowned neurosurgeon in New York, operating on the richest and most exclusive clients (billionaires, world class tennis players) and basically being the best damn doctor he can be. Unfortunately, he’s kind of a jerk, focusing only on his work, forgetting his assistant’s birthday (played by Margo Martindale who was wonderful as Dixie mafia leader Ma Bennett in Justified; she’s slightly less evil here), or being rude to his sister. All of a sudden, during one day of his cold, nearly emotionless life, he appears to run into his ex-wife, who he hasn’t seen in years. They get dinner and chat at his apartment, and he mentions to his sister that he saw her. Later, he finds out she died three weeks ago in a car crash. She visits him several times during the episode, in ghost form, and convinces him to help out the free medical clinic she left behind, by putting her password into the computer there, and to help out of the clients at the clinic in need, even though it takes time away from the VIP clients he normally services.
Wilson plays a privileged middle aged dick-ish guy as well as anyone (see: Little Children) and I actually find myself liking him more than I’m supposed to. Sure, he was kind of a jerk, but he was really more of an insanely career driven guy than anything else. I’m actually not sure whether I’m supposed to like him more or less, but it’s probably better to like him more if I’m going to watch again. The main hook of the show is that his dead wife’s ghost will try to make him a better man, which sounds utterly cheesy but didn’t play out as sappy as it could have.
This series faces the same issue I talked about in my review of the Secret Circle, or in many supernatural shows set in the real world – the how-long-should-it-take-before-I-believe-something-that-seems-insane syndrome as Wilson struggles with the existence of the ghost of his wife. He has himself checked for a tumor with his MRI machine but by the end of the first episode it seems he’ll more or less have to get used to the existence of ghosts. He visits some sort of spirit healer played by Pablo Schreiber, best known as The Wire’s Nick Sobotka, to attempt to remove the spirit, but bails out at the last minute when the ghost convinces him not to.
I watched this on back to back nights with Person of Interest, both on CBS, so it’s hard not to attempt to make a comparison. Both shows were in a way the opposite of what I thought they’d be. Person of Interest I thought would be a sort of sci-fi serial, and it seems to be more of a week by week procedural. A Gifted Man, I thought, and I’m not sure I have a great reason for this, would be at least mostly procedural, and after one episode, it’s not really clear that that’s the case. I still think there’s likely to be episode to episode plots, but the most important aspect of the show with Wilson and his wife’s ghost and him growing as a person and so forth has to be serial.
If I bashed the fake New York-ness of 2 Broke Girls, I should compliment shows set in New York that are clearly filmed in New York. A Gifted Man doesn’t let you forget it, showing at least twice Wilson jogging by the East River. Good for A Gifted Man. It may be occasionally gratuitous but I’m happy to reward shows actually filming in New York by tolerating their showing it off.
Will I watch it again? Probably not, but it was better than I thought it would be. It’s a very respectable show, and I think has the potential to be more interesting than it sounds like it would be from its description. That said, it’s not particularly up my alley just from the description alone, and it wasn’t quite good enough in any one way to make me really feel any need to see another episode. I’m vaguely curious to check out what the show looks like if it’s still around for my midseason review.
I referenced this show in an earlier post about Nestor Carbonell, but since I find the concept so intriguing I wanted to spend some more time on it. Started in 2004, the show starred Carbonell, Hector Elizondo, Viola Davis, and Eric Schaeffer as law firm partners and Ioan Guffudd (who I can tell without even looking it up is Welsh) and Kristin Lehman as associates.
The premise is this. In 2030, in Los Angeles, the law firm of Crane, Constable, McNeil and Montero deals with all manner of law cases which come up, all of which involve questions which wouldn’t exist in our present, largely due to technology that doesn’t exist yet. Some of these issues hit upon what would clearly be hot button political issues, while some of them are more light-hearted. I’ll break down the issues in the pilot below, but issues that come up later on include virtual rape (I honestly don’t know exactly what this is without having watched the episode yet), whether baseball players can use mechanical eyes to improve their vision, a woman fighting for possession of her dead husband’s computerized likeness, and the gay gene.
The lawyers fit different roles. Davis is the no-nonsense skeptical of pro bono work lawyer, while Elizondo is the wise beyond his years tells-random-stories-and-calls-it-advice senior partner. Carbonell is a former politician who doesn’t really understand the law but knows how to read people while Schaffer is the skeevy sexually harassing lawyer obsessed with his self image.
The idea of the show is genius for many reasons. For one, let all the existing law shows crowd around the existing legal issues. Sure, there’s a lot, but they’re still bound to repeat with so many shows and so many episodes. Century City is the only show that can tackle the tough issues that don’t even exist yet. Second, the license for creativity is infinite. Most law shows aren’t truly bound to a high level of accuracy, but they at least generally feel like they have to try and pretend. Century Citycan claim that laws have changed, the legal system has changed, and precedents have changed any way they find convenient for drama. Third, you get both a science fiction and a legal procedural audience with one fell swoop.
I decided to rewatch the first episode, which is on Hulu, to assemble some thoughts. This episode deals with two main legal cases. The first is about cloning, a hot button issue in any time. A client played by David Paymer comes to the firm asking them to represent him, as he’s trying to obtain from the government a cloned fetus that was taken from him at customs. He had it cloned in Singapore, where cloning is legal, as everyone knows, but tried to take it to the US, where cloning is banned. He had the clone created from his son because he needed a liver transplant to save his son, whose liver was failing. This would be created, so the science goes, by either taking the fetus to term and having a new kid, and taking half the liver for his son, or by somehow making it so the fetus just creates a liver. The firm argues the case against a US attorney played by BD Wong. Though it looks bad for a time, when it’s discovered that the son itself is just a clone of Paymer, an extremely moving speech by the Crane lawyer saves the day and sways the jury, leading the government to settle to save face.
The second, lighter case, involves a contract made by an aging rock group. Three of the members have used future surgery and medical techniques to keep them looking young, but the fourth, the lead singer, has decided to revert to looking his age, which is 70. The three want the fourth to take the pills and look young, and claim it’s part of a contract they all signed, but the old-looking lead singer, who the firm represents, disagrees. They go back and forth, fighting, and disagreeing, until towards the end of the episode, one of the younger looking members, really 72, dies of a stroke. At the funeral, the two younger looking members left go up to perform their hit song, allegedly from the early ‘80s, and in a warm moment, the old looking lead singer is finally persuaded to join them by the lawyer, after which the plot isn’t exactly resolved any further.
There are several tips towards the future, aside from merely the topics of law. First, summary judgment motions don’t require actually entering a court room. They can be conducted via hologram in the hologram room that every respectable law firm in the future has. The judge even makes a joke about appearing upside down in hologram-form. Cherries now don’t have pits, Elizondo notes – perhaps the greatest invention of the 21st century! He’s even old enough to remember when grapes still had seeds. Kristin Lehman’s character we learn is part of a cloning project (the “genetic prototype project” to be technical”) in which specially designed humans were let into society to see if they could fit in properly; she has a short identity crisis moment in the episode. An offhand reference is tossed out to a happy patch people can take to stay happy, though it could just mean drugs.
Unfortunately the show lasted a mere nine episodes. If this had been a success, would this be the wave of the future? Shows about typical television professions in the future? I could easily imagine a doctors of the future or a cops of the future. Sure, there have been future cop shows, but 90% of these involve time travel. What about future cop shows they just deal with new types of crime and non-time travel techniques. What about a primetime television soap or a coming of age high school drama set in the future? One can only imagine sadly.
I thought about sub-titling this review, “In Defense of Hipsters.” I didn’t, but we’ll get back to that shortly.
It’s very early in the fall premiere season but we have an early contender for if not the worst show, the show I find most personally offensive. Honestly, it’s not because the writing is bad, although it is. But honestly, (and here’s a kind of compliment, to show this is all even-handed), the writing wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. And Kat Dennings, who I haven’t liked since Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist wasn’t as bad as I thought she would be. The problem with this show is both its absolute lack of understanding of what it’s trying to make fun of, and the ridiculously one-sided stance that comes from that. Allow me to explain.
The first minute or so of the show is the worst minute of television I’ve seen in years (is decades too far?) and although more concentrated than the rest of the show, is a good microcosm for the show at large. I made a mention of a Coldplay reference in my preview of the show but I’m going to break it down further and attach the youtube so you can see for yourself. I’ll break down the clip below.
Two men are sitting at a table in the diner in which waitress Kat Dennings, named Max in the show, works. The men are maybe in their mid-20s and are dressed in plaid and have wool caps on. One of them, after attempting to call her over to the table, snaps at her (finger snaps, not snaps in anger). Without question, this is a rude action. She then retaliates eight-fold. She snaps directly in his face, an action far more rude in and of itself than snapping in the air for the waitress. She then calls out the patron as a hipster, for having no job, which, first, she has absolutely no way of knowing, and second, even if she did, it would be extremely uncalled for and none of her business. She and him are nothing alike at all, she asserts. After the second man at the table notes that his friend has been “burned,” Max lets him know that he doesn’t get off either for this seemingly minor transgression. She, she tells him, wears wool hats because it’s cold, while he, she claims, wears them because of Coldplay.
Let’s break this down. First, if she was pissed, she could have, I don’t know, told them that snapping was obnoxious. Instead she decides to be a total asshole, far more than was called for in retaliation for their snaps. Second, these people don’t dress like hipsters do in New York. Anyone who lives in New York should know this. There is stereotypical clothing they could pick, horn rimmed glasses and tight jeans and trucker hats or beards, but they just got it completely wrong. Third, fucking Coldplay? I’m sure someone wrote this line and thought it was so brilliant that they didn’t want to actually bother to think about accuracy. Coldplay could not be farther from a hipster band. Do hipsters like Coldplay? Sure, maybe, because EVERYONE likes Coldplay. I’m going to go farther though. If anything, hipsters are more likely to HATE Coldplay. In wikipedia’s article on the hipster subculture, they rip a Time magazine quote which says (I know, Time magazine is truly the definitive source on hipsters), “Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay.” I’m sure Max would like Coldplay if she didn’t seem to hate everyone and everything that wasn’t hardscrabble and poor and an underdog. They’re probably too successful so she has to resent them. Fourth, why can’t they wear wool hats? Why is this an objectionable stylish statement to you? If he’s uncomfortable or hot inside, this bothers you why?
And to the greater point, as I alluded to earlier, what the fuck is with this defenseless picking on hipsters for no reason? Why is Max on so much of a higher plane than them? Because they like indie music? Since when did hipsters become so horrible? I’m tired of them being an easy target for honestly no reason, even beside the fact that if there was going to be hipster bashing it should have happened five years ago. There’s plenty of understandable reasons to pick on hipsters; their pretentious music taste, sure. Where is this stereotype that hipsters would be mean to waitresses? Later in the episode, Max notes that she doesn’t envy the other waitress because an Arcade Fire concert just got out next door and hipsters would be crowding the diner. Why the fuck is this so terrible? Not to mention, the Arcade Fire sell out Madison Square Garden. They wouldn’t be playing in Brooklyn. Of course, most of the audience of this show probably doesn’t even know who the Arcade Fire is, Grammy and #1 album or not and they certainly wouldn’t know a real indie band (The Drums, Yuck, or Wild Beasts, just to name a couple actually playing the Music Hall of Williamsburg in the near future).
The Big Bang Theory is despicable for its depiction of nerds, but at least it plays correctly to the horrible stereotypes of nerds. 2 Broke Girls can’t even get that right.
I can’t spend this amount of time on everything else in the show, and admittedly, that’s the single most painful minute, so I’ll move more quickly. Williamsburg, a very gentrified area at this point where rent is not cheap by any means, is portrayed as a rough shithole where second broke girl Caroline, who lost all her money when her dad, a Bernie Madoff take off, got caught, can’t wear her nice coat for fear of getting robbed. Her apartment definitely costs a significant amount of rent for such a titular broke girl. The subway the two are on looks more like a stereotypical subway from the ‘80s than one from today. By no means are all subways immaculate, but nor are they covered in graffiti.
Also, Max works a second job as a nanny for a clueless rich socialite in big bad MANHATTAN. Max is smart and streetwise. The woman she works for though, boy, rich people are so STUPID and LAZY, they can’t even pick up their own kids.
This isn’t fucking Williamsburg. There is nothing New York about this show. I know Michael Patrick King worked on a definitive New York show in Sex and the City but this couldn’t be farther from that. It’s filmed on a sound stage and doesn’t look or feel at all like New York. Beyond that, it’s just painfully inaccurate and patronizing to the people and to the neighborhood.
And I’m sure all this ribbing of hipsters and rich people and New York is all supposed to be taken in good fun, and you might say, chill out, it’s just a sitcom. If that’s how you feel, that’s fine, I’ll respect that. But to me, relying on stereotypes, and worse relying on inaccurate stereotypes is the worst, and maybe worse than worst, the laziest type of comedy.
I’m sorry this review is extra long, but I know I came in biased to this premiere so I wanted to make sure these were really my feelings and I wasn’t forcing it because I wanted to hate the show. I took a good long think about the comedies I do like, and none of them have this attitude of patronizingly picking on certain defenseless easy target groups. Sure, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia picks on everyone, but those characters are supposed to be despicable people, while somehow I think you’re supposed to love Max.
Will I watch it again? No, I will not. You don’t have to hate it. But it wouldn’t hurt if you didn’t watch it at least.
(In order to meld the spirit of futile sports predictions with the high stakes world of the who-will-be-cancelled-first fall television season, I’ve set up a very simple system of predictions for how long new shows will last. Each day, I’ll (I’m aware I switched between we and I) lay out a network’s new shows scheduled to debut in the fall (reality shows not included – I’m already going to fail miserably on scripted shows, I don’t need to tackle a whole other animal) with my prediction of which of three categories it will fall into.
These categories are:
1. Renewal – show gets renewed
2. 13+ – the show gets thirteen or more episodes, but not renewed
3. 12- – the show is cancelled before 13)
We’ll tackle CBS next, the ratings leaders behind their procedural powerhouses CSI and NCIS and unfortunate comedy stars Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. All their new shows start next week except for How to Be A Gentleman, which starts the week after.
2 Broke Girls – 9/19
No single preview has offended me more personally than that for 2 Broke Girls, in which Kat Dennings’s character makes a reference to Coldplay as a hipster band, amongst other things. What Big Bang Theory does for nerds, it looks like 2 Broke Girls will do for hipsters. Basically, it’s a show written to make fun of hipsters by people who don’t know what hipsters are, or it so it appears from the preview. On top of that, I’ve disliked Kat Dennings since I saw Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, one of the worst movies I’ve seen in the last five years.
Verdict. 13+ – For some reason people claim to be liking this, and because it’s on CBS, every show might be renewed because people over the age of 50 just leave the TV on CBS and throw away their remotes, but boy I just can’t pick a show that looks this terrible to succeed in good conscience
How to Be a Gentlemen – 9/29
Ah! Finally, a show that just looks really and truly terrible and has absolutely no reason to support it. Wait – it actually has cast members who I kind of like? David Hornsby, better known to me as Rickety Cricket from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia as the uptight Felix Unger roommate, and Kevin Dillon, or Johnny Drama from Entourage, as the crazy, slobbish, Oscar Madison roommate, along with Dave Foley, Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe from 24) and Rhys Darby (Murray from Flight of the Conchords). Cricket and Johnny Drama are roommates who are perfectly mismatched, have love-hate relationship, teach a little bit to each other, blah blah blah.
Verdict: 12- Boy, I like that cast, but boy that show sounds and looks terrible.
Person of Interest – 9/22
One of the more interesting sounding series of the new season, Person of Interest is something like Batman meets Minority Report. Michael Emerson, otherwise known as the uber-creepy Ben Linus from Lost, is a reclusive billionaire who has developed a program which can predict information about violent crimes in the future, but with limited detail. Linus hires an ex-CIA agent thought to be dead to do the legwork on stopping these crimes that his program picks up on. Add all this to the fact it’s created by Jonathan Nolan, Chris’s younger brother, who co-wrote the screenplays to The Prestige and The Dark Knight and it sounds pretty promising.
Verdict: Renewal – CBS is moving ratings giant CSI to get Person of Interest some viewers – if that’s not a sign of big-time network backing, then I don’t know what is. On top of that, it apparently got legendary approval ratings for its pilot.
A Gifted Man – 9/23
Patrick Wilson is quite literally a man constantly bringing gifts to small children. No, if only. This is actually far more insane. Wilsonis a materialistic, selfish, scrooge-ish but extraordinarily talented surgeon working and dabbling amongst the upper crust exclusively. That is, until his dead wife comes back in ghost form and starts trying to make him a better person, having him run the free clinic that she apparently ran before they died (how did they get along when they were both alive with such disparate interests?). Oh, and Julie Benz (Rita from Dexter) plays his sister.
Verdict: 13+ – Jonathan Demme directed the pilot, which is probably good news, but this seems like it could get awful predictable awful fast.
Unforgettable – 9/20
Gimmicky procedurals are right in CBS’s wheelhouse, and Unforgettable fits right in with The Mentalist. Unforgettable stars Poppy Montgomery as a woman with a rare medical condition, which means that she quite literally can not forget anything. A former detective before the show begins, her former boyfriend and ex-partner (the same person) ask her to come back to help solve cases using her rare ability. On top of that, we’ve got a long-term plot based on the only thing Miss Unforgettable can not remember: The mysterious circumstances behind the murder of her sister! Bum bum bum!
Verdict: 13+ – I’m sure it won’t be bad, but I have a hard time believing it will be that good either. It just sounds so unbelievably generic. On CBS, it’ll get viewers, but CBS expects more too, and one of these dramas has to not deliver
I have some strong feelings about How I Met Your Mother, both good and bad, but I don’t have time for all of it here, so I’ll focus on a couple of points.
It’s the best old-school style sitcom on television, and though that’s sort of a back handed compliment, it is, well, a compliment. It’s a multi-camera sitcom – it takes place largely on a set, and it earns at least my slight ire for being a New York set show filming in Los Angeles (enough shows film in New York these days – no real excuse – plus, it’s not like you can’t tell the difference after watching a real and not real New York show for a season – all the buildings in faux New York shows look so generic, and New York shows go out of their way to show off real New York locations that are well known like Washington Square Park). It also has a laugh track, for which there’s really no excuse this day and age.
Earlier on this list, I talked about how Modern Family subverts the “traditional” sitcom in subtle ways, to make a little bit of a fresh take n the format. For better or worse, How I Met Your Mother doesn’t do that. It’s not a traditional family show certainly, but it keeps within expected bounds, and plays by some of the established rules.
As you may or may not have been able to tell from the tone of the article, generally I think these characteristics (and really, more than anything else, limitations) that mark a “traditional” sitcom are negatives, but they are not by any means enough to necessarily sink a show. Merely, it means that How I Met Your Mother must get out of the hole by being funny. And that it does, very well, generally, though better in some circumstances than others – sometimes it puts its foot in its mouth and prevents situations from being as funny as they could have been. Still, the show, and particularly Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segal, makes you laugh, has some quotable lines, even catch phrases, in a good way, rather than a this feels so forced into my vernacular way.
A couple of notes particularly on the most recent season (SPOILERS).
Quickly, they maybe dipped too often into the Robin Sparkles’ well. Episode “The Slap Bet,” the first episode with Robin Sparkles, was the best episode of the series, and while I like that they don’t forget about it, every episode in which they’ve tried to recreate another song seems like a pale imitation.
In bigger plot points, what irritates me most of all is the way it feels like they’re forcing Barney into all of a sudden wanting to get married, and then getting married very quickly afterwards. There’s two issues I have here. First of all, it doesn’t feel natural at all. Barney is a womanizer, and he just has a revelation that he’s super unsatisfied in his current lifestyle in one moment, revealing it to us, even though we’ve seen absolutely no evidence before. Second, okay, the writers decide they want an emotional plotline for Barney. They already have one with him finally meeting and coming to terms with his dad! You can’t get much more big and emotional than that, and they’ve been harping about his lack of dad over and over again for the entire show so it feels perfectly natural. Why can’t they just use that and be happy about it?
I’ll end with a complimentary note –Marshall’s dad’s death and its aftermath was handled very well. It was a really sad and cruel moment, and I resented feeling so bummed when watching a comedy, but that being their goal, it was well executed.
Why it’s this high: Neil Patrick Harris makes me laugh, and Jason Segal often does too
Why it’s not higher: When the show is not being funny, it’s being terrible
Best episode from the most recent season: It hasn’t been the strongest season, it’s been a slow downhill journey since season 2, but still there are plenty of funny moments and episodes – “Unfinished” I’ll pick mainly due to the plotline in which Barney woos Ted back to designing the building for his bank, by treating him like a woman.
Television, the Drug of the Nation 