Very quietly over the course of several years, FOX's Tuesday night comedy lineup has become the thing I most actively look forward to on television. I may love Parks & Recreation more than any of those individual shows, but my job has shifted me to the evening shift on that day and I am not sorry to miss the rest of the line-up (sorry, Michael J.) FOX has a very good stable of shows for its Tuesday night line-up. The only problem is that they are only using 3/4 of it.
I could rail on Dads all night if I needed to, or if I was a paid TV critic... but for a hobbyist who's only in it for yuks, it feels like an easy, obvious target. I have nothing against multi-camera sitcoms on principle, but this is a terrible program made by TV vets who, I think, sensed they could get away with something. It's riddled with lame jokes, bad premises, one-dimensional characters, racism, sexism, and Giovanni Ribisi. Okay, that really was a cheap shot. My actual point, aside from my dislike of the show, is that it genuinely seems like a baffling lead-in for a night that consists of the Parks-and-Rec-like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and the female-friendly New Girl and Mindy Project. What they ought to do is bring back Raising Hope, the "hey-this-is-pretty-good" Greg Garcia show that is basically a more family-oriented My Name is Earl (what with the poor people trying to learn to grow as human beings.)
Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a delight, though, and it should be with this kind of pedigree. Not only does it have P&R's Michael Schur and Dan Goor, it also has Clone High's Phil Lord and Chris Miller. If you had told me a year ago that I'd be super into an Andy Samberg vehicle, I'd have said, "No, yeah, I can see it, as long as the writing is good." The series follows the familiar premise of being about a guy who is great at his job but kind of a goof (cf. Jim Halpert, Dr. John Dorian,) and a girl who is also great at her job but a bit uptight about it (oh hey Leslie Knope,) and they're probably going to be dating in a few seasons. The dynamic between Samberg as Det. Peralta and Stephanie Beatriz as Det. Santiago is great, but they're not so intertwined that it keeps the supporting characters at bay. This week's episode saw Samberg struggling to learn to play second fiddle to Joe Lo Truglio's Det. Boyle, while Beatriz was busy enlisting the help of Terry Crews' Sergeant character to win over the Captain, Andre Braugher. It's a good mix, and Crews and Braugher in particular both manage to make their characters into standouts. Ever since he was one of the best things on Arrested Development Season 4, I've been sold on Crews' comedic chops, and the "I can't read that guy" runner about Braugher's character was great. To this day, long after they became great, I still can't watch the first 6 episodes of Parks & Recreation or The Office, so to see this one hit the ground running bodes very well.
New Girl kind of snuck up on me, in that I've watched it from the beginning, and I thought "Hey cool, Zooey Deschanel in my living room every week," but about midway between the first season I realized that they had really hit gold with Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield and Lamorne Morris as Nick, Schmidt and Winston. In fact, considering he's somewhat removed from the two main plots of the show (Nick and Jess' relationship/Schmid's two-timing ways) they have given Winston some great C-plots. Morris manages to play them to the hilt, where they rely on the character basically being pathetic, but still lovable, whether it's discovering he's colourblind ("If those [green] shoes are brown, what colour do you think you are?") or trying to get his (stolen) cat some action: "No way in hell I'm running a cat brothel in my room and I'm the only normal one in this loft!"
In this week's episode, Schmidt goes heel after his dual breakups, playing Nick and Jess' insecurities as a way to drive them apart so that everyone is as miserable as he is. It's the kind of cartoonish supervillainy you have to be really sure of your characters before you let loose. While I understand there are people against the Nick/Jess pairing -- what with the chase always being more thrilling than the catch -- we all knew where this was going, and being able to hold off until season 3 is gratifying, and for what it's worth I think they are doing this relationship exactly right, laying all their absurdities bare, as in when Nick finally expresses his "feelings" and it involves his love of the cello and the time he saw a zebra give birth at the zoo. Putting these characters as a unified force against the now-maniacal Schmidt (who will eat Jess' birth control pills to keep them apart) is a dynamic I can get behind. It's a point where "I don't want them to be doing this" becomes overruled by "I like the results." Trust the writers of these shows, they know where the funny is.
At the end of the night, The Mindy Project is a very earnest show, always going for the sweet when other shows might go sour. It doesn't always make me laugh out loud, but after juggling around and trying to find its direction, it's created a rewarding stable of characters that has only gotten stronger with the addition of Adam Pally... although I do just wish he was back playing Max Bloom on Happy Endings. The show is sort of a serialized quasi-chick flick, in that it does the "short relationship arc" formula familiar from many sitcoms, but really does its diligence in getting Mindy attached, so that it can wring a bit more emotion than average out of the inevitable break-up. It's a good and bad thing, in that there are only so many times it can play through this cycle before viewers just stop buying in, since the long game seems to be to get Mindy together with the hard-nosed Dr. Castellano, played by Chris Messina... whose presence onscreen always inspires me to remind anyone nearby that he "doesn't believe in the Devil... because people are evil enough." Still, hot off the heels of Mindy's engagement to Anders (Workaholics) Holm, we get a dickish lawyer played by Glenn Howerton of It's Always Sunny, and the cycle continues. Howerton begins the episode openly mocking Mindy, but by the end seems to have warmed to her... like I said, earnest stuff.
These are three reliable, enjoyable, sometimes excellent comedies. And being that there's nothing I like on TV more than comedies, this has become one of my favourite nights to sit in front of the flatscreen. It will be prefect, just as soon as I find something to watch at 8:00... besides the first half-hour of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD on ABC.
No comments:
Post a Comment