Tag Archives: TBS

Summer 2012 Review: Sullivan and Son

5 Sep

Here’s the premise, and essentially the first episode of Sullivan and Son in reliatvely brief. Steve Sullivan is a big-city corporate lawyer living in New York, where he was just promoted to some nameless, not-understandable-by-normal-people position for his investment bank.  He’s returning to his hometown of Pittsburgh for his dad’s birthday with his girlfriend, another big city NYer more excited about his promotion than he is. He gets back, hangs out with his friends from home and his family, and finds out his dad is selling the bar that has been in the family for multiple generations. He realizes his dad enjoys every day as a bartender, while he dreads every day as a corporate lawyer, so he decides on a whim to buy the bar, and move home to spend time with his friends and family. His big city girlfriend can’t even begin to comprehend his decision and decides to return to NY, ending their relationship.

Sullivan and Son features just about every classic go-to sitcom contrast a viewer can ask for (or ask to please not have). It’s got poor vs. rich; he was making big time bucks in his NYC corporate lawyer job, but will trade it in for a less financially fulfilled life living around the poorer goofballs of Pittsburgh – rich is good for your wallet, but not for your soul.  He’ll both bartend and practice some law, although local real person law rather than unintelligible corporate law (see: Ed). It’s got big city – small town (even though it’s Pittsburgh, not Stuckeyville, but still). New York may be upscale and sophisticated but it has no heart, and people don’t care about each other like they do in Pittsburgh.  Steve’s girlfriend represents every negative stereotype about NYC and pretty much admits it straight out – she wants to pay too much for pretentious but inferior products – coffee, she says, costs four dollars, because that’s how you know it’s good. She wants to be around people who matter, and who are sophisticated, unlike those losers in Pittsburgh, and, well, she wants this big materalistic life that clearly shows a lack of appreciation for the things that really matter in life.   We’ve got the ethnic clash as well – (a la Rob Schneider’s Rob! (forget about that one already?  sorry for reminding you), but one generation removed – unlike Rob, who is marrying a Mexican-American, Steve is son of mixed-race parents) – Steve is the product of an Irish father and a Korean mother.  Her Korean mother naturally prefers her son to her daughter, and participates and likely will continue to in further Korean cliches.

The bar is fulled with lovable loser characters who will inhibit the series – Steve’s cadre of hometown friends, who naturally act like kind of jerks, because that’s how all good sitcom friends act (see:  The League) – like real friends who make fun of you, but take it just a little too far in situations.  There’s the older folks too, including the mother one of his friends (played by brief SNL veteran Christine Ebersole), a local lovable drunk who still wants to sleep around with just about anyone, making for both awkward and good-humored situations for the other customers, as well as the resident old racist (played by brief SNL veteran Brian Doyle Murray), which also makes for awkward and good-humored situations for the other customers.  There’s also the old high school crush that may have been interested in him too (Ed again) who is apparently now kind of dating a guy who does exactly what Steve used to do two days ago before he abruptly decided to take over the bar.  I guess they’ll never revisit that.

That’s the show.  There’ll be some guys hanging out and ribbing on each other, some will-Steve-slowly-get-closer-to-dating-his-old-high-school-crush, some Irish and Korean stereotypes, and some good-hearted everyone loves each other after all moments, I’m sure.  It’s not  terrible like the truly bad shows are (again, Rob!) but why this show exists I’m not exactly sure.

Will I watch it again?  No.  I suppose if I must judge this against other TBS sitcoms, it’s better than Men at Work.  The humor is cliched and tried but I think I like the main character in this show more than anyone in that show, and the people in general seem less obnoxious with the possibility of even being likable.  Alas, it’s still not very good.  I’m sorry if The Office, Arrested Development, and it’s progeny have gotten me to expect more out of a sitcom than a couple of cliches and a laugh track, but they have.  Just try a little harder next time, please.

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Summer 2012 Review: Men at Work

7 Jul

TBS postured its endless series of Men at Work ads throughout the NBA Playoffs (endless is if anything, an understatement, as they appeared at every commercial break at least once in a couple of different forms – scenes from the show, actors talking about their characters, actors pretending to just be hanging out and having a good time) as a show just about men being men.  It’s the anti-Community or insert your favorite super smart deep and layered comedy-here – it’s turn the brain off, and sit down and have some fun, a couple of laughs, and hang out with the bros doing bro stuff.

The problem with that philosophy is that when you go out trying to make a stupid show, you usually end up with a stupid show.

Our main characters are four dudes who are good friends and also co-workers at what appears to be a magazine of some sort.  The show is apparently supposed to be set in New York, which I would never have known except for an offhand reference at the end, it looks far more like the non-descript soundstage on which it’s surely filmed.  If I’ve complained about shows claiming to be set in New York but looking nothing like New York once, I’ve done it a thousand times, but since there’s far worse things about this show, I’ll note it once and move on.

The four guys are all played by TV veterans.  That 70s Show’s Danny Masterson plays Milo, whose girlfriend (played by Amy Smart, who you’d think they’d bring back because why else have someone of her level of fame be in the show for thirty seconds) breaks up with him in the first episode.  His buds are Tyler, played by Michael Cassidy, who had recurring roles in Smallville and The O.C., Gibbs, played by James Lesure who was the sidekick on Las Vegas for several years (it’s definitely sad that Gibbs just makes me think of NCIS) and nerdish Neal, played my hometown East Meadow’s own Adam Busch, who recurred as Season 6 villain Warren in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Neal is the only one in a long-term relationship with his girlfriend Amy, while the others are single and ready to mingle.

I used this word when describing Charlie Sheen’s Anger Management, but it’s just as true here; everything about the show is retrograde.  The laugh track, the that’s-what-men-do situations and banter; it’s like the show ignored the past decade of the evolution of comedy.  I realize there’s an implicit judgment here, but comedy has come so far not just with edgy, interesting shows, but with shows that even simply take the classic formula and just modernize it.  Parks and Recreation is a great example of this.  There’s nothing wild about it’s set up, it’s a workplace comedy essentially but it’s smart, funny, and doesn’t talk down to the viewer.  There’s also room for comedies that don’t make you think a ton; It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia isn’t layered or filled with deeper meaning, but it’s downright hilarious. Easy un-thinking viewing shouldn’t require a lot of thinking for the viewer, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t require thinking for the writers.

Men at Work features old, tired, tropes about what being a man is and treats these tropes in extremely unfunny ways.  No real people hang out like this, and if they did I certainly wouldn’t want to watch it.  The boys take their moping, newly broken up with friend, out to the bar to hit on some hotties and get “rebound ass” (in even more obnoxious fashion, the screen helpfully highlights with a TBS-provided definition of what rebound ass means).

Also, it’s worth noting that the show is created by of all people, actor Breckin Meyer, currently starring in TBS sister network TNT hour long Franklin and Bash (as…Franklin?  that’s a guess and I don’t think I care enough to check further).

Unlike with Anger Management network FX, there has never been a single good TBS comedy so it’s not as if I was expecting otherwise.  I just wish the rest of America would catch up with good taste, and yes, I’m being judgmental.  People out there can watch and enjoy this if they want, but that doesn’t mean it’s not bad.  There’s plenty of solid material out there to be written about guys and friends and friends who are guys, but it would be nice if someone thinks about it a little bit before putting pen to paper (fingers to keyboard?).

Will I watch it again?  Not unless those endless TNT commercials for the show put some sort of hypnotic message in my head which forces me to.

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