The fall season has officially begun! I'm offering up my thoughts on some of the new comedies this season. I'm afraid the offerings have been slim so far. There is some promise, and one show I really like (hint: it's the picture). Anyway, onward!
Up All Night
Promising would be the best way to describe Up All Night. Will Arnet and Christina Applegate are winsome as Chris and Reagan, the suffering parents of a newborn baby. They argue about who has had less sleep, Chris is mystified by the grocery store now that he is a stay at home Dad, and they worry that they're not cool anymore now that they're parents. Through it all it's never treated as a burden. The Brinkley's love they're baby girl and will do anything for her, they just wish she would sleep through the night sometime. The problem is the other half of the show where Reagan is working at a talk show hosted by Ava, played by Maya Rudolph doing her Oprah from SNL. I love Maya Rudolph, but the scenes in the workplace are much more cartoonish than the more realistic home scenes. This leaves you with a internal inconsistency. If they reign in the wackiness of Rudolph, both sides of the show would work better together, elevating the material. As for now, I'll still watch for the home scenes.
Free Agents
The main problem with Free Agents is that it's just not funny. It has a likeable cast with two good leads in Hank Azaria and Kathryn Hahn, but the funny just isn't there. It's also run by John Enbom, who was the showrunner on the amazingly funny Party Down. Nobody watched Party Down, so maybe he felt the need to change things up with his writing, but I don't think people are going to watch an unfunny comedy. Then again, millions of people watch Two and a Half Men every week. I gave it two weeks, I'll be back if I hear it's gotten better.
2 Broke Girls
Bad, flashes of things that could be good if they focused on that, then right back to the bad again. Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs are good and work great together, but I've spent the majority of the two episodes wishing they would get some better writing. The best parts of the show are when the two of them are playfully making fun of each other, like friends do. The problem is those moments are few and far between and are surround by horrible puns and supporting roles of racial stereotypes. I wanted to like this show, even more than Free Agents, because it had the aforementioned flashes, but I just could not stand the badness of everything else. I could only be lured back to this if I hear it gets markedly better.
Whitney
Bad again. That's 2 for 2 for Whitney Cummings created shows (the other is 2 Broke Girls). While there were things I liked in 2 Broke Girls with everything else being horrible, Whitney was pretty much horrible all the way through. The jokes were bad, the supporting characters were caricatures, and the laugh track was really grating. It was filmed in front of a live audience, but it sounds like these people were high on something because they find every line funny. There was only one thing that made me laugh, the naughty nurse sequence. It probably helped that it had Whitney dressed in a nughty nurse outfit, but it seemed more genuine. Even that scene had a joke where Whitney says that her boyfriend, Alex, needs to see Dr Quinn. The look Alex gives her says all you really need to know about that joke and is funny in itself, but then he says, "medicine woman?" as if they have to pound us over the head with the joke to make sure everyone realizes what they are referencing. That's all you really need to know about Whitney. I'm not even sure if I'm going to give this a second episode.
New Girl
Lastly, we have the one comedy that I liked unabashedly. This show is all Zooey Deschanel, so if you don't like her, you are almost certainly not going to like this. I, on the other hand, am a big fan of Zooey, and I really enjoyed this. She does have her three new male roommates, but they're only given the slightest bit of character in the pilot. I assume they'll be better fleshed out in the future, but even now with the minimal of characterization, I enjoy their parts. The best being the douchebag roommate, whom they force to put a dollar in the douchebag jar everytime he does something really douchy. Zooey herself is adorably dorky (or as all the promos like to put it, "adorkable") as Jess as she references Lord of the Rings, cries to Dirty Dancing on a loop after her breakup, is awkward in social situations, and every so often sings to herself. All traits I find endearing, others may find grating. They even find a nice way to undercut the obligatory "she actually looks good in a dress scene" by her doing a wonderfully awkward dance. This is the only new comedy I'm actively looking forward to every week.
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