Tag Archives: Sean Saves the World

Fall 2013 Review: Sean Saves the World

25 Oct

Sean saving the world

Sean Saves the World stars Sean Hayes as a gay single parent. A show starring a gay single parent is not nearly as groundbreaking as a gay main character was on Will & Grace, the show on which Hayes originally gained fame, and that’s a good thing.  It’s a great thing that a gay single parent doesn’t even move the controversy meter much anymore; there’s none of the uproar from conservative affiliates pulling the show from their stations en masse.  I’m sure the real fringe doesn’t like it, but the vast vast majority of America couldn’t care less. What’s more remarkable about Sean Saves the World is that its featuring a gay single parent is really the only modern aspect of the show.

Sean Hayes stars as well, Sean, a single dad, who now has full custody of his 14-year old daughter after her mother moves away to take a new job. He wants to be the best parent he can be, and his stressed about his lack of full-time parenting experience. Luckily, he has the help of his overbearing mother, played by Linda Lavin, who starred as Alice in Alice some years ago. All that’s getting in the way of his planned daddy-daughter post-work bonding time is his new cartoonishly terrible new boss played by former The State member and Reno 911 veteran Thomas Lennon who specializes in cartoonish over the top characters (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse). Sean is continually stressed in his attempt to lead his coworkers and succeed at work while making time for his daughter.

Sean Saves the World is a sitcom in the classic, old-fashioned vein. It’s a sitcom with a capital S. A Sitcom. . Sean Hayes would be an absolute star in the days in which Sitcom stars were king, an era that didn’t end that long ago. Sean Saves the World immediately feels like a Sitcom in format with its laugh track and multiple camera set up, but even aside from these basic background factors, Sean Saves the World buys into every part of the formula that went into making those old Sitcoms.  The humor here is based on the humor that inspired those Sitcom. There’s no fast talking or quick cuts or subtle jokes and looks that require multiple viewers to really appreciate.  There’s blatant, obvious laugh lines, followed by long pauses.

Compared to small s sitcom acting, Sitcom acting relies on loud unsubtle gestures and extreme looks which last an inordinate amount of time to make sure every last viewer has seen them. If sitcom acting is more similar to film acting, Sitcom acting is akin to theater acting. Every joke has to be accentuated to make sure the audience gets it, every facial expression has be to clear and overwrought so that even the viewers in the far back rows can get the idea.  Every bit of physical comedy is overplayed so you know exactly what’s coming next. At one point in the episode, Sean is trying to escape his work through the bathroom window so that the boss doesn’t see him leaving. He steps on some furniture to help him reach the window. The second he gets up on that furniture it’s clear that the furniture is going to break while he’s stepping on it, but the audience has to wait until Sean’s finally making progress for the furniture to break and Sean to fall and injure himself in a comical manner. There’s plenty of shoddy wordplay which is a staple of any old fashioned Sitcom, overwritten dialogue that might instantly seem clever, but really isn’t. It’s borscht belt humor, hamming it up left and right.

If I was reviewing Hayes’ ability as a Sitcom actor, well, he’s a pro. His mother is also. They’re both quite good at what the show is clearly going for, whether it was their decision or not. Unfortunately that style just leeches the humor out of every situation. We’re a long way away from the domination of that era, when there were three networks and those were the only comedies on television and I don’t ever want to go back.

Will I watch it again? No. It’s quite good at being something that I don’t care for at all and not good at anything I like.  So, in short, I don’t like it, it’s not funny, and I’m not going to watch it again.

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Fall 2013 Previews and Predictions: NBC

13 Sep

NBC

(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)

NBC, surprisingly enough has been making slight progress over the last couple of years while people forgot to check on them because they were so far in the basement.  Their biggest new hit is reality show The Voice, but they’ll hope one of these new shows will bolster their line up.  Will they?  Let’s take a guess.

The Blacklist – 9/23

Spader is on The Blacklist

No network, aside from maybe, maybe ABC with Agents of Shield is pumping any new show this year as much as NBC is pumping The Black List.  James Spader seems perfectly cast a slimy mega-criminal who turns himself in for some mysterious reason to the government, agreeing to help them catch other mega-criminals in exchange for some sort of deal which includes that he only talks to one young female agent.  If it works, it could be the best CBS procedural in ages. In theory, he’ll help catch a new criminal every week while many a long term plot develops about why he turned himself in to begin with.

Prediction: Renewal – NBC, a network in need of a hit, has put all of its promotional muscle behind The Black List, and they claim viewers in focus groups loved it beyond belief.  Even if it’s not a huge hit, they’ll take it.

The Michael J. Fox Show – 9/26

Fox is The Michael J. Fox Show

Michael J. Fox portrays a legendary local news anchor who retires, like Fox himself, because of Parkinson’s disease, but then after driving his family and himself crazy in retirement, decides to make a return. Fox’s wife is played by Breaking Bad’s Betsy Brandt and his boss is played by The Wire’s Wendell Pierce.  Fox is a certified TV legend but the show does not look good. It doesn’t look historically bad, or worst sitcom of the year bad, it just looks generically mediocre, like a sitcom that should have existed two decades ago and not today.  It’s unfortunate because it’s hard to not root for Fox.

Prediction:  Renewal – after the Blacklist, I was almost arbitrarily deciding to pick a second NBC show for renewal, and when in doubt I go with the star power of Fox, who everyone loves, even if his show isn’t very good.

Ironside – 10/2

Underwood is Ironside

Blair Underwood will probably not channel original Ironside actor Raymond Burr too much in this remake of a ‘60s show about a detective in a wheelchair.  Ironside doesn’t play by the rules; he makes his own, and so on and so forth.  You will probably be able to watch five minutes of this show or less to realize exactly how it goes.  The superiors will be annoyed by Ironside now and then, as he’s tired of their conventional thinking and bureaucracy, but dammit, he’ll get results. The police procedural Ironside is yet another sign of NBC imitating CBS.

Prediction: 13+ – It looks pretty generic, which in this case, means I’ll take the middle ground, and go full season but not second.

Welcome to the Family – 10/3

O'Malley is Welcome to the Family

Every network has a limited amount of time and money for promotion, and every year, some shows, like The Blacklist, get promoted endlessly, while some shows, like Welcome to the Family, get more or less entirely ignored.  Mike O’Malley, who has grown on me over the years, plays the father of a recent high school graduate who gets knocked up by her high school boyfriend (a Latino, no less!), whose father O’Malley does not get along with.  The kids decide to make a go of it, meaning the families have to try to make a go of it as well.  Wacky hijinks ensue, with the potential for the occasional culture clash as a backdrop.

Prediction: 12- Maybe you’ve heard of some of these shows, but unless you pay really close attention you probably haven’t heard of this one, hence the lack of faith.

Sean Saves the World – 10/3

Hayes is Sean Saves the World

Sean Hayes juggles a judgmental mother, a teenage daughter, and a horrible boss, already before his life gets even more difficult when he gets full custody of his kid. Wacky Reno 911 actor Thomas Lennon plays his boss, while Linda Lavin plays his mom.  Was TV really missing Sean Hayes that badly? I would vastly prefer a show where Sean literally saves the world every episode; as it is, I expect very little.

Prediction: 12- – Sean Hayes doesn’t have the Michael J. Fox star power.  This show will probably be worse, and it’s definitely first to the chopping block fi they both do about the same, ratings-wise.

Dracula – 10/25

Rhys Meyers is Dracula

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who last starred on TV as an entirely different kind of historical figure in The Tudors, stars as Dracula, who comes to London to get his revenge for a multitude of betrayals from centuries earlier.  The creator of Carnivale will serve as showrunner which probably means the show will make no sense.  This is actually a British-American joint venture, and there will be only 10 episodes in the first season, so,I’m not going to predict it because it breaks the rules, and at least until enough network shows break the rules to come up with a better system, I’m going to leave this one out.  Still, it’s a show, so I feel at least compelled to provide a preview. This is definitely one of the very few network shows this year I don’t really have a read on.  I wouldn’t count on much from it, but it actually might be good, which is more than many network shows even have from the get go.

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Snap Judgements: NBC Upfronts

13 May

I’ve made a mini-tradition of previewing and predicting the success of new fall shows towards the end of summer and beginning of fall, and I plan on continuing that, but I’m adding an even earlier take on new shows which have clips available, where I’ll look solely at the previews provided by the networks at the upfronts (fancy TV talk for place where they show off their upcoming schedule and shows) and provide some quick thoughts.  Because I’m a born pessimist, I’ll be ranking the shows to provide at least some relative positivism.  Hint:  If your show has a laugh track, it’s probably towards the bottom.

First, we’ll take a look at the mostly CBS-ification and occasional ABC-ification of NBC’s new programming.  Follow along.

6.  Sean Saves the World

Sean Hayes is a single gay dad who has to juggle work, parenting (he quite literally says “parenting” at least twice in the trailer), and his overbearing mother.  Life is rough!  He gets into zany situations trying to get home early from his hilariously brutal boss!  There’s a laugh track!  Only points are for use of Capital Cities’ Safe and Sound in the second half.

5. Ironside


Remake city! Ironside (presumably how the main character is referred to, I don’t think anyone calls him that in the trailer that I can recall) is Blair Underwood as a cop in a wheelchair who sees things differently (from his lower perspective, of course)!  Ironside is based on a late-60s and early-70s show starring Raymond Burr as a paralyzed cop.  My problem is not the fact that it’s a remake though.  I mean, boy, you know The Blacklist is nothing new, but this just hits every fucking cop show convention pitch perfectly.  He plays by his own rules, he has his own special unit to get the serious business done, and sometimes he doesn’t follow every regulation in the name of justice.  It’s in danger of being one Blair Underwood away from veering into parody.

4. The Michael J. Fox Show


Of course I like Michael J. Fox.  He seems impossible not to like.  That said, this show is far more on the traditional end of sitcoms than what normally interests me.  There’s no laugh track.  But there’s really nothing at all funny in the trailer.  It’s not insufferable like Sean Saves the World but the jokes just do not fly.  I watched it actually a second time and there must be 25 lines designed for potential laughs in the trailer and none of them work.  Points for featuring Wendell Pierce of The Wire, though, and just a note that his wife is Marie from Breaking Bad, Betsy Brandt.

3.  Dracula


Are we not done with vampires yet? True Blood and Twilight have pretty much helped eliminate all the good will for the mythical beasts in pop culture generated by Buffy by now. Anyway, I have no idea what this show is about still after watching the trailer, and me not knowing is pretty much by itself elevating it to the third spot, which may say something about the early look at NBC’s line up.  I think maybe one vampire decides to violate other vampire’s codes and somehow gets into a battle with them.  I don’t really have hope, but maybe I’m confused and everything about it is a lot more interesting.

2.  Welcome to the Family


Mike O’Malley, who is gearing up his resume for Zeljko Ivanek Hall of Fame consideration, plays a dad who is excited to have his daughter, who just graduated high school, off to college, so he can finally get some empty nest him-time with his wife.  Unfortunately, his plans, like the best of them, go awry, when it turns out his daughter his been knocked up by another high schooler, with a dad who shares a mutual enmity with O’Malley.  This is going to be awkward.  It’s a clear Modern Family clone, and looks, well, like Modern Family.

1.  The Blacklist


Hey, production value counts here.  It’s a CBS/TNT-esque darker version of White Collar starring James Spader as a dangerous criminal who works with the FBI to put other criminals away, but he’s a lot less likable, it seems than Neal from the USA show.  The banter remains though and Spader remains as deliciously slimy as ever.  As this appears procedural, I highly doubt I will ever watch more than one episode but I’m sure it’ll give me something for my dad to watch and me to ask him about for the next couple of years.

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