Agreed, can’t think of a single redeeming quality except the australian girl is absurdly hot and I could probably watch her for 22 minutes a week.
The show actually did address this, though not at all deftly. Apparenty the universal reaction to losing one’s job is to throw a brick through your former employer’s window. Ha Ha Ha!!!
When some anthropologists uncover this show in one hundred years or so, the ONLY references they understand will be the ones about fake poo and vomit.
I don’t think our future robotic overlords would get even that.
I liked how it’s a show set in India and there were still more white people billed in the opening credits than Indians. It was close, but I think the whites edged them out by one.
I doubt there’s much hostility from creative Hollywood types for the low-class pink- and blue-collar workers whose jobs are most likely to be outsourced. So, appreciating different cultures: cool, sympathy for American economic losers: not cool.
Just a nitpick: Wouldn’t the office’s peak time to take calls from the U.S. happen at night, since India is on the other side of the world? Looked like bright sunshine coming into the office when the manager announced the busy time was coming.
Heh, apparently I went to high school with your wife. Parvesh was a nice guy (I assume he still is, but I haven’t spoken to him in ages).
I noticed that too.
I’m not Indian, but >I< thought it was pretty offensive. Typical thin, cartoonish Indian characters. Diedrich Bader was the only good thing about the whole episode.
The movie was authentic, from the heart and genuinely touching. This is just shit.
In the movie (which I recommend), they were taking calls at night.
Wow. My wife and I were asking ourselves if we hadn’t just seen a movie with almost the same premise… didn’t even occur to me until now that it’s based directly on that movie.
It showed moments of possible greatness, but didn’t grab me like I hoped. I’ll give it another few chances. I agree they are kind of stuck in a weird place. If they play it safe, it will get boring and could be canceled, but if they go all out, they risk offending someone and getting cancelled because of it.
I’m sure they are setting up a love triangle between the aussie girl, the lead guy, and “Asha”. We didn’t get nearly enough of that Gupta guy to know why everyone hates him. And the bit with the (Sikh?) guy with the turban never really had any pay off.
I was kind of hoping it would be some high-tech firm being outsourced, since that would hit closer to home for myself, but I guess the novelty company is more ripe for jokes.
They were kinda harsh on Indian food. It’s pretty popular in the U.S., so it shouldn’t be such a culture shock for the guy.
I’m hopeful, partly because Parks and Recreation sucked its first year as well. But the second season of that show was much better. So perhaps this will improve as well.
Indian food in the US is in an entirely different category than the actual food in India. I completely sympathized with him when he ordered “some of the green and brown stuff”. And I can directly testify that not only is much of their food almost inedibly spicy (and I have a high tolerance to spice) but it can also do some very creative things to an untrained digestive system.
I quit watching about halfway through. Very formulaic.
Me too!
I’m done with The Office, losing interest in 30Rock, thought Outsourced sucked and ditched Community for BBTheory (no Tevo).
**Parks And Rec **is slated to return mid-season.
I thought it was really terrible. It made me uncomfortable to watch, and I thought it was the longest 22 minutes of programming ever. Jokes fell flat, the main guy doesn’t even have a face, and I thought he was unnecessarily cruel to the operators. Not just in the strange and belittling comments he made about their culture (who the fuck doesn’t know the cow thing? For example) but in that he was so convinced they were losers. I get the general dynamic they were going for-fish-out-of-water + wacky-but-lovable misfits, but what they ended up with douche-face + poor-people-who-seem-perfectly-nice-dealing-with-doucheface.
Yeah he’s a douche, but his heart seems to be in the right place (he shunned his countryman to sit with ‘his team’ at lunch for morale). He seems to be designed as the typically naive and unintentionally offensive westerner in a foreign situation. I think he has to start out pretty low to be so they have space to develop a positive character arc over the course of the show. He’ll obviously learn to integrate and accept the foreign culture, and the differences of people in general. I thought the same thing about Jeff Winger in Community. I hate-hate-hated him and his douchmonkey arrogant attitude, but it was only the starting point. He developed into a likable, entertaining character (though he still has his female-cleansing-apparatus-y moments).
I don’t know why I’m defending this so much. I honestly still feel only cautiously optimistic about the show, but I do see the potential of a much-needed replacement to the rapidly-declining Office. And as someone said earlier, Parks and Rec kinda sucked the first season and then got fanfuckingtastic. So c’mon, little fella. I’m pulling for you :).
Though I do really miss Parks and Rec.