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| Sean Giambrone and George Segal on The Goldbergs, now on ABC |
Even in this era of cable television when a series can premiere at any point on the calendar, September, when the major networks premiere the majority of their new shows, remains a special time for TV viewers. Most of the shows you see this fall won't be here come January, but with a crop of almost 50 new shows coming your way in the next few weeks, it may be difficult to figure out which to check out and which to pass on. Today I'm looking at five new comedies which recently showed up on our airwaves, some more promising than others: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Fox), Trophy Wife (ABC), The Goldbergs (ABC), The Crazy Ones (CBS), and Dads (Fox).
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| Andre Braugher and Andy Samberg in Brooklyn Nine-Nine |
In my experience, new comedies always have a steeper hill to
climb then new dramas. A freshman drama, especially a procedural, can often
tell a compelling, self-contained story and take its time introducing viewers
to its characters. Story and tone can carry the day, at least in the short
term. Comedies, on the other hand, are about trust. And it can take a little
while before a viewer – this viewer at least – can relax enough in the
company of new people, fictional though they may be, to join in their fun. This
is why it is all the more wonderful when a new series succeeds right out of the
gate. (Four years ago, Modern Family
did just that.) This year, that honour goes to Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Fox's new sitcom, a workplace comedy set in a Brooklyn police precinct, comes on the scene as easily
the most confident and fully realized new comedy of the season. Good-natured
and often delightful, Brooklyn Nine-Nine
stars Saturday Night Live-alum Andy
Samberg as Detective Jake Peralta, a good cop but overgrown man-child (“The
only puzzle he hasn't solved is how to grow up") who struggles to shape up
when his laid-back police captain is replaced by the far more formidable and
stone-faced Captain Holt, played Andre Braugher (Homicide: Life on the Street, and last year's Last Resort). The ensemble also includes Melissa Fumero as Jake's
more uptight partner Amy Santiago, Terry Crews (Everybody Loves Chris), and Joe Lo Truglio. (SNL's
Fred Armisen has a brief but memorable cameo in the
pilot episode.)
Created by Dan Goor and Michael Schur (who last worked
together on NBC's Parks and Recreation),
Brooklyn Nine-Nine is far more than an Andy
Samberg vehicle. (Based on the two episodes which have already aired, it might turn
out to actually be an Andre Braugher vehicle!) Samberg successfully slips into
the Peralta character with abandon, but perhaps the real surprise however how
much of a comedic force Braugher is. Calling back to the commanding presence of
Homicide's Det. Pembleton, the
51-year-old Braugher brings weight to the room. Despite its sitcom frame, the
show also looks and feels authentic. With the usual squad room dynamics and lingo
(Santiago hopes aloud that Capt. Holt will be
her 'rabbi'), petty rivalries, regular piss-taking and barbed camaraderie among
the detectives, Brooklyn is clearly
playing with well-established tropes familiar to any viewer of police dramas
(from Hill Street Blues to Homicide to The Wire or even last year's, cancelled-too-soon, Golden Boy) – but the show doesn't
depend on those tropes. It doesn't have the surrealist edge of 2009's The Unusuals, but considering the fate
of that ABC series, perhaps that's a good thing. I would rather this one stuck
around for more than one season.
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| Bradley Whitford and Malin Åkerman in Trophy Wife |
Though its title – and indeed the framing narration of the
pilot episode – would imply that this is primarily Kate's story, concealed
beneath the (clearly ironic) title is one of this new season's most promising
new family ensemble comedies. It's always a shame when a show's name proves to
be a distraction (I'm looking at you, Cougar Town
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| The cast of The Goldbergs |
Set in the mid-1980s,
The Goldbergs is an ostensibly autobiographical suburban coming-of-age
comedy, in the style of The Wonder
Years. Quick confession: I approached this pilot with some ambivalence. For
one, I still haven't quite forgiven it for simply lifting the title of Gertrude
Berg's absolutely classic 1950s sitcom. For another, I was also a teenager in
the 1980s and as far as I can remember, the 80s weren't particularly funny. Unlike
me, however, The Goldbergs' creator
Adam Goldberg (Breaking In) spent
the 80s with a camcorder on his shoulder, irritating his loud, quirky Jewish
family and prepping for that day when he would get to helm a single-camera
sitcom for ABC.
First off, what's good: George Segal as 'Pops' Solomon,
young Adam's womanizing grandfather. Segal slips into the role with panache and
his scenes with Adam (played well by 14-year-old Sean Giambrone) are among the
best in the pilot episode. Also, Patton Oswalt (Justified) is on board as the show's Bob Saget/Daniel Stern adult narrating voice. Jeff Garlin (Curb Your
Enthusiasm) certainly has presence as Murray, the Goldberg patriarch, but
so far he seems to only have two modes: yelling loudly and yelling quietly.
What's less than good: Period shows always have to balance shopping list-style
nostalgia with creating a realistic sense of an era, and the pilot doesn't
quite yet have its equilibrium. Boat-sized Buick sedans? Check. Audio cassettes
and REO Speedwagon? Check. Hopefully the series will have gotten all the Ghostbusters and Rubik's Cube references
out of its system by episode four, and we may be able to see the story beneath
the Reagan-era trappings. Still, the pilot did have its touching moments. A
closing montage using clips from Adam Goldberg's archival footage of his real
family repeating small scenes from the episode we'd just seen however actually enchanted
me more than the show on its own. (It had the troubling effect of making me
want to love the show more than the episode itself did.)
The Goldbergs lands
firmly in the wait and see column. The tone of the inaugural episode certainly
does earn some the Wonder Years talk
that has been bandied about, but (perhaps I can still remember 1985), it is
hard for me to experience that nostalgic glow that the Wonder Years had. There is a volume to the characters – the
father, the brother, and the mother all speak at dangerously high decibels
which obstructs our entry into their world. This is no doubt intentional – so that
their mushy insides will be all the more mushy when revealed – but if that is
the arc of every episode (yelling and stomping turn to half-second flashes of quiet,
sincere affection), I fear I'll tire quickly.
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| Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Crazy Ones |
Named for the groundbreaking 1997 Apple ad that launched its 'Think Different' campaign (the ad
notoriously/famously featured Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia
Earhart, Pablo Picasso, and Martin Luther King Jr.), The Crazy Ones introduces us to Simon and Sydney Roberts, a
successful father/daughter ad team struggling to keep their company afloat.
Celebrated advertising executive Simon (played by Robin Williams, in his first
regular television series since Mork and
Mindy ended in 1982) founded the company but is past his prime, and he often
needs to be handled by Sydney (Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
David E. Kelley (Boston Legal,
Ally McBeal) is at the helm as
producer and writer, but Robin Williams is in the front seat.
The pilot (which aired last night on CBS) is largely what
you'd expect in this post-Mad Men
era: pitch conferences with major brands (this week it was McDonald's),
heartstring pulling ad concepts designed to convinced humourless executives
that the human touch is the best way to move a product. The primary business
idiom of the pilot is rebranding,
although the show itself isn't doing much of that. The Crazy Ones will rise or fall depending on how much Robin Williams
being Robin Williams appeals to regular viewers. Williams is in fact the best
and the worst thing about the show so far. His frenzied, schizophrenic
stream-of-consciousness monologuing shows up in practically every scene he
appears. James Wolk (right off the actual set of Mad Men) plays Zach, a quick-witted younger creative who often
plays off of Williams in some of the episode's set pieces. (A scene in which
the two try to convince Kelly Clarkson that she should sing the classic
McDonald's jingle "You deserve a break today" in a desperate bid to
keep McDonald's as a client displays their chemistry at its best – Clarkson
would rather steam up the studio with a rendition of The Swallows' classic
"It Ain't the Meat"). Still, Williams' Simon Roberts (how much name
recognition does a star need to get one of those 'close but no cigar' handles?)
is often too big for the room, and sometimes too much for the screen. When I
first heard of the series – and the Buffy
fan in me was looking forward to a better Sarah Michelle Gellar vehicle than
last year's underwhelming Ringer – I feared the show would just give Williams the keys and let him drive away with
the show. It is a bit more restrained
than that, but Williams remains as much a distraction as an anchor. The conceit
of the series – the aging past his prime ad executive (with a fluctuating
grasp of reality) who needs to rein in his manic behaviour, paired with his long-suffering daughter and
business partner, who needs to learn to loosen up – is fairly well executed.
But it will have to walk that not so fine line between corporate realism and
product placement better than the pilot did – and hopefully Kelley will learn
that a little Robin Williams goes a long way.
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| Martin Mull, Peter Riegert, Seth Green, and Giovanni Ribisi |
Dads, a fairly
run-of-the-mill multi-camera laugh track sitcom, has earned some undeserved
notoriety in the past few weeks as both the "most racist" and
"worst" show on television. It is however neither. Produced by Family Guy and American Dad creator Seth MacFarlane – it is his first life-action
series – Dads stars Seth Green (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Robot Chicken) and Giovanni Ribisi as
two lifelong friends, and co-founders of a successful videogame start-up, who
are forced to deal with their frustrating and intrusive fathers, played by Peter Riegert (Local Hero) and comedy
veteran Martin Mull (Arrested Development). Long before the series
premiered last week on Fox, the still-unscreened pilot of Dads generated
a lot of very public disdain, mainly for its depiction of Asians. After the
wrongheaded vilification of the absolutely charming Outsourced a few
summers ago, I felt compelled to check out the series, and perhaps come to the
show's defence. Dads, however, is no Outsourced, though the show's
worst crimes certainly are not worth the bad name it's received. It isn't
racist (most of the bigotry comes from Mull 's
character, but those racist comments are also clearly why his son finds his
presence such a pain), but neither is it particularly funny.
I do appreciate what
Dads was going for: the inter-generational angle is ripe for comedy, and the
notion of taking the edgy sitcom with an ensemble of ever more unlikeable characters off cable and into the more traditional realm of network television
could be fruitful. But even though the first two episodes had their moments,
cable still does it so much raunchier and funnier – put it alongside FX's pair of
long-running poor taste comedies, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The
League, and Dads pales to the point of invisibility. But this is by no means
the worst (or even the most racist) comedy on television: after all Two Broke Girls is still on the air, isn't it? And the talents of Seth Green
and Martin Mull do shine through the sometimes weak material and far too
emphatic laugh track. There is even one fairly remarkable moment in the pilot – wherein Green mimes murdering his father behind his back, while Riegert is apparently
engrossed by an antisemitism documentary on television – that might make the
first episode worth watching in itself. But don't believe the hype: there is
little here salacious enough to be worthy of the ire the show has inspired.
– Mark Clamen is a writer, critic, film programmer and lifelong television enthusiast. He lives in Toronto, where he often lectures on television, film, and popular culture.
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