I caught the two episodes last night and I think the show has a chance.
It’ll take a while for the characters to develop but I think the premise of the show is fairly clever, witty, and ‘new’.
We have a somewhat dysfunctional family (but not so much different than real life, yet different than your typical family type sitcom) that tends to air their problems out in front of each other in awkward, off balance ways. The series starts with the family in a state of disarray, which lends itself to continue in that direction and it also allows the writers to travel back in time to show us some of the things that led up this (with flashback type shows).
I think the comedy seems natural and not forced. It also reminds me of some situations I’ve seen in real life.
I like it.
What I don’t like is the camera work. The shots are too jumpy, the scenes are cut too close to each other and you can sometimes loose place when this happens.
Example; One shot of a dialogue will show the characters from the front (you can see their faces) then the next shot will show them from the side/back of thier heads (when all you can see of the character talking is his/her jaw moving). Some scenes show the entire body and then the next cut to the same conversation will only show some off angle shot of the persons head.
It’s different but it’s also distracting.
The show claims that some of the dialogue is improvised, yet I couldn’t really pick out any scenes that seemed to be ‘on the fly’.
What else…it has a lot of potential, - just get the camera work fixed guys!
Anyone else?
I think the freaky camera work is because of the improvisation. As in, they may be chopping down miles of footage, splicing different shots together to make the finished product.
Granted, the Christopher Guest movies seem to be able to achieve much more seemless editing, but it’s my current theory, as I noticed the same camera weirdness you did.
I caught the two episode premiere last week, and thought it was just good enough to try it again this week. I thought last night’s episodes were awesome, and am already hooked. The plethora of hot chicks certainly doesn’t hurt.
It’s odd that two laugh track-less sitcoms are on against each other. Currently I’m taping Scrubs and watching this one, as I usually cook and eat while watching live tv, so I have to tape the one I like better.
I was thinking how cool it would be to have a solid two hour block of laugh track-less sitcoms. It would involve S&D switching networks, but still it would be a nice block of comedy. Just imagine:
My Name Is Earl
The Office
Sons & Daughters
Scrubs
I kind of agree, except there seems to be enough cameras around to catch any dialogue from just about any view. I think what’s happening is the editors are trying extra hard to make it seem like the cameras have to jump around to catch improvisation.
And I didn’t even notice the lack of laugh track, I guess it’s from years of having to block it out of my head.
I’m going to go home tonite and re-watch last nights episodes and see if my feelings for the show change at all. Some shows are funny no matter how many times you watch 'em. I’ll test that tonite.
