Busy days, but there have been three new programs launched over the past few days…. I may comment more on these later but:
Cracking Up, a sitcom about a pyschology student who moves in with a family to deal with their crazy kid, only to find that the kid is the sanest one, doe shave some positive attributes and texture. However, the family members are all such cartoons that it was hard to be involved. It’s all played on a very obvious level. There are some talented folks here (and some others), so maybe something will shake out, but it just ain’t quite funny yet.
Game Over also has over-the-top characters, in this case a family of characters who don’t realize they’re each stars of various videogames. He’s a race car driver, she’s a Lara Croft-esque spy, the kids are various things, and while there is a good gag or two along the way, this is quite limited by the way they’re doing the computer animation. Everyone spends their time mugging, as though it’s impressive that they can do that sort of computer animation. Even if it were impressive, it just ain’t funny. (The same concept might have been much funnier… and probably more expensive to film… if it wasn’t a computer animated show.)
(Arrested Development does the crazy family so well that its easy for everything else to pale in comparison. The more you get to know the AD characters, the funnier it all becomes. Smart, smart stuff.)
And there’s a new series on Bravo with a name that eludes me at the moment, about three couples going through therapy, all done in a rapid-cut style. In each case, it’s an annoying man and a woman who suffers through it in some ways. It’s all just annoying. Particularly the character who is supposed to think he’s funny when he’s really being annoying — doesn’t take a genius to figure that the audience might also find the character unfunny and annoying. The ads push this as filling the void left by Sex And The City; it feels more like it fills the void left by the U.S. version of Coupling, and doesn’t even take up all of that slack.
