I actually like this show. Much to my surprise. Strangely, there’s something both juvenile and mature about it. It was on for a few episodes last season, and now it has aired three new ones in a mini-marathon on Sunday. Is anyone else watching? Does anyone know whether it was renewed, or are they just airing what reels they have as filler until it’s done?
I like it. It’s a quirky little show. Philip Baker Hall with his hip-hop lingo and the American Psycho colleague who always turns up in the elevator to spout his pearly gobs of wisdom are pure gold.
Sadly, it’s been cancelled and they’re showing the remainder of what was shot over the summer.
Damn Fox.
My husband and I thought it was cute and quirky, kind of reminiscent of Malcolm in the Middle in terms of humor and writing, but not something we’d go out of our way to watch.
Philip Baker Hall is a god among apes.
I miss the ridiculously hot blonde from the initial run.
I never understood just WHAT FOX was trying to do with this show. The first season premiered around April or May of last year, and it was funny and great…they only made about 7 episodes though, like most shows that premiere late into the season. And then it doesn’t show up on the fall or winter schedules, and everybody (myself included) assumes it has been cancelled, but then lo and behold a second season appears in June, with 2 or 3 episodes a week (and two of the cast members missing–so now the show focuses mainly on the airline industry, which is still great mainly because of Mr Bookman, and Thesis’s stoner brother which is awful and unfunny), with an announcement made before the beginning of the season that it’s already been cancelled. Did FOX WANT this show to fail, and why did they even make a second season, only to cancel the show before it even aired?
The one thing that always did annoy me about this show is how Thesis basically plays every character Ben Stiller has ever played in each episode. The stupid misunderstandings or small accident leading to bigger accidents angle in every episode was really getting tired.
It’s…awful! I grudgingly watch because it’s a summer show and thus one of the only things on, it’s beautiful in HD, and the lead is cute (and I’ve noticed him since “Grounded for Life”). Most of the gags are mediocre but the slacker brother just destroys the show, overall quality wise.
I watched 10 minutes of this dreck last Sunday. It’s a glossy sitcom with the usual “one normal guy in an office filled with wacky characters” premise, but one that falls into all the traps of this premise, e.g. make a character too wacky and they become unbelievable/one-note/disconnected from the ensemble; as the character comedy runs out of gas, rely on sight/verbal gags.
Example: The show is about an airline, so this week a representative from the TSA leads a conference that demos a new security screening device that allows travellers to get thru security faster. Naturally, the one middle-eastern looking fellow in the conference remarks that its a great idea, since he doesn’t think travelers care much for “the usual strip search that we all go thru at the airport; right?” A tiny ha-ha, but then as the demo continues, the SAME GUY makes the SAME JOKE three more times, varying only in the mention of rubber gloves, long interrogation sessions, etc. It’s a pretty dim sign of things to come if you’re alreaedy recycling a joke halfway in.
2nd example: A character goes up on the roof, and one of the “wacky” bosses lands on a helicopter pad. He is then asked by the boss to put something she is carrying back in the helicopter. As he walks toward it bent over, someone else on the roof asks “what the hell are you doing?”, to which he responds "oh…I dunno…I saw it on MASH once." He stands up, walks to the chopper, and then we overhear the other person on the roof say “should we tell him about the stong draft from those blades?” After a second or two, the walking character is knocked down by the wind from the spinning rotor. Either leave it at the MASH line, or dump the “hit-over-the-head” setup for the sight gag, but please learn how to distill the joke down to the funny, make us laugh and move on. I know the helicopter shoot was expensive, but that doesn’t mean you have to linger on it for so long.
Final example: The slacker roommate–wow, just like a modern-day “Odd Couple”, eh?–has a predictably easy way with ditsy women. At one point, he and his latest conquest remark over how funny a word sounds, going on for about a minute saying the word back and forth to each other. Cut to straight-faced brother’s reaction shot. Then cut again. And again. Yes, really.
Ten minutes was all I could take. I don’t really care about the put-upon yet overqualified assistant, the virago sex-cougar boss, or the pot-addled roommate because they’re cliches done far,. far better in other comedies. This is like watching a Xerox of a Xerox of a junky medley of sitcom cliches. Pass.
It may just be the glow of a new episode of anything, but I liked it OK. Just like I am enjoying the eps of Standoff that they are getting back to over the summer.
I thought it was a puerile piece of shit when it first debuted last fall (?), but this latest episode was truly awful. At first I thought they were making a joke about product placement with the whole “stride gum” thing (which I didn’t realize was a real brand), but then the commercial breaks were flooded with an actual contest involving Stride gum! Doesn’t that legally make the episode an infomercial!?
I like it, primarily because Mimi Rogers is one serious MILF. It has its Scrubs-ish charms but I admit it doesn’t have enough staying power - too many episodes in which characters ridiculously over-react.
Indeed, I have memories of one of the room-mates (the main character used to have more peers than just his brother) made a remark that the blonde couldn’t work in a bar because she couldn’t handle unruly drunks. She spent the rest of the episode casually kicking the nay-sayer’s ass.
Agreed. At least Sam and his brother are hot and do the occasional skin scene. 
The only episode I’ve seen was last week’s episode where what’s-his-name thought Mimi Rogers was a dude. While there were a few scenes that made me chuckle I was almost embarassed to sit through the whole thing with my wife because it’s so bad. We’re talking about a woman I took to see the South Park movie as our first date. I can’t really blame any of the actors, especially the woman who plays Darcy since she’s as cute as button, but the show just didn’t click with me. It was just bad.
Marc