Friday, March 21, 2008

A couple of new sitcoms

Unhitched: I think that the creators and writers of this show know that it really makes no sense that the characters in this show are friends and that all have gotten divorced or ended long relationships at the same time, but they don't seem to let it bother them. And I guess that's ok, because this show seems to basically be a vehicle to come up with as many crazy/awkward/embarrassing/stupid bad dates as possible. And honestly, some of it is really funny. There's the musician who turns out to be just an air guitarists, the short guy who works for the Celtics who turns out to be the leprechaun mascot, the woman who has a chimp she calls her "roommate"...I have to admit I laughed at a lot of these silly situations.

Rashida Jones, who played Karen on the Office and who I actually really like, is the one girl in the group, Kate, and then there's Gator, who's kind of the overall nice guy; Tommy, who's like the ladies' man who's been divorced three times; and Freddy, the geeky awkward Indian surgeon. I kind of wonder if Kate and Gator are going to get together...I'm not saying it makes sense but it seems like the sort of thing that would happen on this sort of show. Not must see by any means, but I found it amusing enough, I guess. Not sure what its chances of survival are though. Seems like a lot of the midseason shows aren't being promoted very well...

Miss/Guided: I've always really liked Judy Greer...she was hilarious as Kitty on Arrested Development and I loved her on Love Monkey (I wonder when I'm going to stop being bitter about that show being canceled) and of course she was in 13 Going on 30! She's got this sort of offbeat sensibility that's really likable so I was pretty happy to hear that she got her own show.

Here she plays Becky Freely, who returns to the high school where she was once an awkward and insecure teenager to be a guidance counselor. She has a big crush on Tim, the auto shop turned Spanish teacher, who's basically a good guy despite being a bit dim (he's played by Kristoffer Polaha, who I remember from that terrible show North Shore...was I the only one who watched that?), and has to deal with Lisa, the new English teacher, who was the prettiest and most popular girl in her class back in high school (played by Brooke Burns who coincidentally was also on North Shore...) and Vice Principal Terry, who's played by Chris Parnell and is a hoot. The show features little "confessionals" where the character speak directly to the camera, kind of like in reality shows, which I'm not yet sure if I like, but I really enjoyed the couple of episodes that have aired. Again it's not a must see or anything, but I liked the characters a lot so I might stick with it for a little bit longer.

Apparently Ashton Kutcher is a producer, and he appears in the second episode as a substitute teacher who goes after Becky and poses a threat to Tim's job. There's a scene where his character holds up a stereo playing Peter Cetera's The Glory of Love to Becky's window like in Say Anything that just totally cracked me up. I'm not a huge Ashton fan, and I do like him best in small doses like this one.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Seriously! I should be watching anything Rashida Jones is in, and instead I'm left here with no idea what's going on on television. I didn't know Aliens in America was still on, I didn't know that there was going to be a new season of Doctor Who already... not that that last one is American networks' fault. But it's like they are trying to get back at the writers by refusing to advertise anything that is going on.