PARTNERS

* 1/2 (out of ****)

Having a gay lead character seemed like a daring thing to do roughly a decade and a half ago. Now in this, the late late nineties, we’ve all decided that it’s cool to have gay friends, not think it’s a big deal that one of our family members is gay, and are unimpressed with shows that feature a gay character. Does that mean we’re done with gay characters in general? Nope…it just means that a character’s gayness is no longer enough. He has to be an actual 3-D person, besides the fact that he’s gay. Craziness? Let’s try something out. Take a scene from the earlier nineties sitcom Seinfeld, where two of the characters, Jerry and George, are discussing their problems with women. Now change all of the pronouns, so they are talking about men. Pretend, for just a moment, that these two bastions of manliness are actually gay. Still funny? Yes. Funny only because the characters are gay? Not at all. Funny only because the characters are gay? Not even a little bit. Partners features two best friends, a ‘mo and a breeder, who own their own architecture company or some shit. The straight one designs houses, and the gay one says flamboyant things and dramatically passes out on couches. Let’s put aside the fact that not a single funny thing happens in this episode, something that we said we were going to do this pilot season. Let’s instead ask ourselves if this premise sounds even original, much less daring, to you. If it does, just fucking watch it. I don’t care. Laugh at how gay the gay man is, and feel like this is a couple of your baby steps into being an accepting human being. If it doesn’t, hang tight. Something funny has to come out this season, right? — RH

BEN AND KATE

*** (out of ****)

Guess what? Ben and Kate is kind of funny sometimes, which, if I had to guess, is going to elevate it past every new comedy this season. Kate is a good girl who, on one bad night, got knocked up. Fast forward five years later, and she has a six year old (don’t ask me), and still has an older brother who is a slacker vagabond who can’t stay in one place, and pops into Kate’s life from time to time to say or do something super whacky, only to disappear again. Because this is a pilot, by the end of the episode Ben has decided to stick around, help raise his niece, and only grow up just enough to still keep him zany, but not so much that you want to curbstomp him or watch him drown in the rain. He’s really not very bright. Ben and Kate, when it succeeds, it’s because of that old cliché of “comedy with heart.” They are able to make Ben just likeable enough where we can laugh with him and at him at the same time, instead of just laughing at him. The problem with the show seems to come from a bit of multiple personality disorder, just as far as tone goes. Because there’s nothing super-revelatory in the premise, acting, or writing, we need a stronger show runner that can add a singular voice that would really elevate this show. Instead we get an OK show that, in the meantime, is trying to be too many other shows. But hey — we’re being forgiving this season, so Ben and Kate could definitely be a show that I could see tuning back in to halfway through the season. Their problems are large, but fixable. — RH

THE MINDY PROJECT

**1/2 (out of ****)

The Mindy Project isn’t super funny, but has occasional belly laughs, dabbles in drama, and gives us insight to our main character, not only as their character, but also into the real person. Sound familiar? Probably not, so I’ll just tell you. I don’t think Mindy Kaling was given the Louie treatment (a network tells her that she can produce, write, direct, edit, and star in her own show with little to no tampering), but this seems as close to that as someone like Mindy Kaling could be given by something like FOX. And Mindy Kaling, you are no Louie CK. I’m not trying to be a dick. I’m just saying that Louie CK isn’t at the top of his game, he’s at the top of the game, with everyone else on the planet looking up to him. That’s a lot for Kaling to live up to, and here she clearly falls short. Forgetting about Louie for a second, if that’s even possible, Kaling certainly didn’t swing and missed. She just hit a hard foul, and I’m interested to see the next pitch. Mindy stars as Mindy, a doctor who is trying to juggle her failing professional life (her patients keep getting stolen from her, she can’t say no to patients without health insurance) and her failing personal life (she just got dumped by her boyfriend, who then immediately married someone else). Important stuff? No, at least not on the surface. But nothing that Louie is tackling important on the surface. It’s how Louie can breathe his fresh, weird voice in to it. Mindy Kaling isn’t there yet, but there are strange things going on here. Notice the pacing, which definitely is closer to Louie than it is your average CBS three camera, or even your average NBC one camera. Notice the fact that there are almost no other women in it. This is a show about Mindy, and how Mindy deals with guys. There’s an obligatory friend, who spends most of the episode on the phone with Mindy, and that’s only so we can hear Mindy’s side of the conversation. The only scene that she’s in, she’s in with her daughter, which is more a way to show how Mindy is clearly not mature enough to be apparent, as opposed to show us how close these two women are. It’s not a ton to hang her hat on, but there’s just enough sitcom rule breaking going on here to eventually be something worthwhile. – RH

VEGAS

*** (out of ****)

Network dramas have it rough these days. For a bevy of reasons, it’s getting more and more difficult to compete with the dramas of pay and even basic cable, so they basically have two options. They can be spectacularly cheesedick, like The Mob Doctor, or they can be one-and-done, case of the week shows, like CSI, where their audience doesn’t have to worry if they miss one or not, which for some reason they never would. And then there’s a show like Vegas, which is too confused with all of that to be great, but wants so badly to be good, and might have actually achieved it. Vegas stars Dennis Quaid as a cattle ranchin’ cowboy, working on the outskirts of Las Vegas in 1960. One thing leads to another, and Dennis Quaid has to get deputized in order to help solve a murder. In the meantime, Michael Chiklis has moved in, with a desire to turn that Vegas into the Vegas of today we know and tolerate, and, while he’s at it, get rid of the way that the mob “animals” run things…or does he. It’s actually a pretty compelling premise, with two compelling leads. The problem is that they can’t curse, and they can’t take all of the time they need to develop everything they have to develop, because they’re nervous that their audience will get bored. And they’re right. I can’t really blame them. At least they know what they have, which is the always awesome Michael Chiklis, and the alwayser awesomer Dennis Quaid. The shit that this old school cowboy pulls in this show is worth the price of admission alone, with the best part happening in the first five minutes. Quaid gets punched in the face, and gives the puncher such a wonderful look of angry bemusement that he seems destined for his own Chuck Norris meme. – RH

BRICKLEBERRY

* (out of ****)

Imagine aspiring to one day be even remotely close to the pinnacle of comedy that is Family Guy. And then imagine being so far away from that that it’s impossible to imagine it being anything but a pipe dream that will never happen. That’s the story with Brickleberry, one of the most painful twenty minutes I’ve had this year, and I’ve passed 65 kidney stones since January. The one redeeming quality is that the failure of this show could mean the demise of Daniel Tosh, he of the ability to make the most obvious joke at any given time. Now that I think about it, it’s no wonder he thought he could make a new Family Guy. Brickleberry tells the story of a summer camp, and the rangers that run it. There’s one dude, and this other chick, and then a black guy…you know what, who gives a shit? Why is this worse than the other stuff that’s out there? Because new shows like Guys With Kids are just trying to play to the lowest common denominator. They think “If senile idiots will sit through The Big Bang Theory, they’ll sit through this, too.” Brickleberry, however, thinks it’s something special. It tells jokes about rape and black people and smelling toenails, and sure, we’re very offensive (it’s not), but, when people calm down (they’re already calm because they don’t care), it’ll make them think (nope), and learn that it’s okay to laugh it anything (oh my God shutup). Watch Brickleberry as soon as possible, because I’m pretty sure it will soon become one of this pop culture litmus tests that we love so much, where “I’m a Brickleberry fan” is akin to saying “I’m a fucking idiot, and we should be enemies.” — RH