How did the TVGuide put it? " The US’s answer to the UK’s answer to ‘Friends’." Since I don’t really like Friends in the first place, I’m pretty sure I’d rather keep watching The OC than Friend’s second cousin once removed.
[sub] Gabbo is from the Simpsons, right? I seem to recall a terrible episode involving a plot about Bart being usurped by something called Gabbo. [/sub]
How many “hotel” sitcoms must we endure? The worst one was with Jaime Fox. I cringed everytime I saw the ad for that.
John Larroquette at the train station (!!!) was probably the worst setting for a sitcom ever.
You can throw Jamie Fox into anything, and it will suck. Three words: Nielsen Box Poison.
Did NBC not get the “Whoopi Goldberg is not funny” bulletin?
From Rex Dart:
Actually, it was a bus station. Not that it helped any. It DID suck.
Bus station. I happened to like it. Sure, it had some stinkers but there were some very clever moments. Like John coming off a marajuana brownie-induced high and seeing a couple of ~10 foot tall Mummenshanz puppets. David Crosby as his AA mentor. Bob Goldthwait as the boss’s nephew.
I knew she was bad when I walked out of “The Telephone”, the ONLY film for which I’ve ever done that.
Totally agree with the OP. And Lord Ashtar. Don’t know how she continues to get work. The most unfunny comedienne EVER.
I absolutely loved The John Larroquette Show. It was a very dark, quirky sitcom that dealt with some serious issues (alcoholism, religion) and characters that aren’t normally seen on sitcoms (prostitutes, homeless people, janitors). In addition to multiple Emmy winner Larroquette, it featured amazing performances by Liz Torres, Darryl Mitchell, Chi McBride, Lenny Clarke (mentioned above for a new sitcom, which I might check out just to see him), and Elizabeth Berridge.
O.K., enough love for the John Larroquette Show – I agree that Whoopi looks like a stinker. But it’s worth mentioning that the point of the Arab jokes is that the character in question is not an Arab, he’s Iranian, which is an entirely different thing.
I haven’t watched a sitcom regularly since Niles married Daphne, and I doubt I’ll start again this season.
So far I’ve seen half the pilot, and it’s really enough for me. Tired, stale, forced, stereotype-based comedy. Whoopi can be great with the right material; obviously this isn’t it. (I’ve never known a Persian who sounded like the guy in this show.)
Every so often somebody comes up with a fresh, funny show that doesn’t use tired sitcom techniques (e.g., “Scrubs” or “Freaks and Geeks”), yet year after year we get unfunny, stagey sitcoms using the three-camera setup Norman Lear was using thirty years ago.
Incidentally, I enjoy “Coupling” when I see it on BBC-America, yet I know I would hate an American version (just as I hated “Friends”). Somehow, the English and Welsh accents make it work for me.
That’s in the *second * episode…
I planned on taking the bullet and reviewing it for you guys but I turned it before the opening credits came on.
I turned it back after it went off and watched the Laroquette sitcom. It was halfway decent… the daughter was really cute.
<goes off to imdb.com to find out who she was>
Isn’t the daughter the girl from the trash bag commercials?
Now that you mention it, I think you’re right. I’m now less attracted to her for having remembered her Gilbert Godfried impersonation.
But, man, did she nail it!
Oh God…I watched them both. Are they trying to win a prize for worst sitcoms of the season? Woppi plays like a couple of stand-up comics going out of their way to offend each and every member of the audience- but there are people in a hotel who have to endure their annoyance too. And Happy Family…shouldn’t they spent a couple of minutes trying to build up the “things were going well…until today” angle? That way maybe the characters would feel less whiny and death-worthy. Longest hour of TV ever.
Whoopi was like having hot pins stuck into your body for 30 minutes. Nothing big enough to cause serious harm, but enough pain that you never want to go through it again.
I didn’t watch all of Happy Family, but it wasn’t that bad. It might have legs. At least the two leads are much better actors.
I’d just like to say that the best movie Whoopi was ever in was a taut 80s drug-cop thriller called Fatal Beauty.
And I’d also like to say that the movie would have been much better if a good actress had been cast instead of Whoopi. I mean, that movie would’ve been greatly improved if Kathleen Turner, or even Tina Turner, had played the lead.
Her standup routines are boring, too, and she tainted every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation she was in, with the smugness of her character.
Yeah, in a commercial for this beauty during Monday’s Bucs game, I heard a really inappropriate comment from the father character. He said he had to fix the “faguccino” machine. I did a double take, asked my brother if that’s what he heard too, and hit replay on the TiVo to make sure, and yep, that’s what he said. In what way is that supposed to attract anyone to this show? I know that to most of my countrypersons, the f-word is not particularly offensive, but to my eyes it’s as bad as the n-word (I’m self-censoring in the Café) or any other racial or ethnic slur. Since I don’t actually watch ABC, it’s not like I’ll miss anything by skipping it, but still, that’s really unacceptable.
Whoopie Goldberg is in that show? You wouldn’t know it from the commercials. I thought it was the Fat Screaming Arab show. You know how they say a show is past its prime once they stop focusing on the main characters and start focusing on the wacky side characters? What does it say about a show that’s doing that before it airs its first episode?
As he keeps telling people, he’s not an Arab, he’s a Persian.
Whoopi had not a single laugh. The white girl talking street slang bit was funny when Barbara Billingsly did it in Airplane. It hasn’t worked since, because nobody seems to understand why it worked so well there. It worked because it wasn’t just one straight forward joke, it was part of a half dozen things all going on at the same time. A: It was June Cleaver doing it. B. It was wayyyy over the top, while coupled with subtitles that used extremely formal English. C. The “jive talking” black guys were played against type–they appeared to be ordinary, well-dressed businessmen. D. Nobody was playing it tongue in cheek–they all played it straight, as if it were a serious drama.
Becker has been a consistently funny show for several years. Yes, I realize that admitting that makes me officially middle aged.
I loved The John Larroquette Show enough that I’d buy season sets dvd’s, or even a complete series (I think it went only two seasons) set.