APRIL TV EXTRAVAGANZA!

 

HOW TO LIVE WITH YOUR PARENTS(FOR THE REST

OF YOUR LIFE)

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

 

I’m never surprised when I watch a new TV show (or new anything for that matter) that seems like a composite of things that worked in other shows. This is the way of the world. It’s a “copycat league” as they say. What caught me off guard about How to Live With Your Parents is that it really only steals from shows that aren’t or weren’t that successful. If you’re going to steal, take from things that are popular, like (miraculously) three camera sitcoms, like The Big Bang Theory or Two and a Half Men. How to Live With Your Parents however steals from other, better shows that nobody watched in the first place. It doesn’t seem like you’re understanding the point of stealing there, professors.

Sarah Chalke plays Polly Whogivesashit, who, with her daughter, moves back into her parents house after leaving her husband. This premise is clearly ready to explode with comedy but, just in case you were unsure, Chalke’s very busy narration lets us know that her parents don’t know how to censor themselves. The show wants to make sure that we don’t have to spend anytime figuring that out for ourselves, so it tells us in the first minute, and then, towards the end of the show, Chalke actually says the exact same thing to her mother! It happens twice! But hey – if the parents can’t censor themselves, at least that means we’re going to get a couple of wacky, hilarious characters, right? Barf.

The episode cruises through it’s pathos so quickly (Chalke is a worrier because her parents weren’t, her fear of dogs is being passed on to her daughter) that by the end of the episode, everything is solved. Like everything. Like there is no need for the show to go on. It was a shitty half hour, but they solved the problem of needing any more half hours. For this reason, and this reason alone, I appreciate you, HTLWYP (FTROYL).

 

ROGUE

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

What How to Live Your Parents does to setback single camera comedy, Rogue does for paycable drama. Thandie Newton stars as Travis, an undercover cop working for a Russian (or something) drug czar (or something). While on a “job”, she gets “arrested”, only to find out that her son was murdered in a hit-and-run. Instead of taking her mandatory time off, Newton jumps back undercover, but this time with no assistance from the police. You can feel Rogue trying super hard to build a giant world of goodguys and badguys, cops and robbers, sinners and saints, but the result is such painful Z-grade schlock that it’s hard to choke any of it down. Everything is tryhard, in the worst possible ways, led by Newton.

It’s probably difficult to play someone who is essentially a triple agent, hiding secrets from every single other character. I’m no actor, but you want my advice? Just pretend like you don’t have a secret at all. We’re not stupid. We’ll remember that you can’t tell your daughter that you might have to fuck your Russian drug boss tonight. Instead, we get Newton quietly being conflicted with everything that comes her way. Case in point: Newton has to make it home for dinner with her daughter, but she was told she had to come to the drug czar’s son’s prison release party. So she goes, trying to make it home as fast as possible. Walking into the bathroom, she accidentally interrupts one of the gang members doing coke. He offers her some, but she can’t because she has to be home soon to be with her daughter. Here are your options:

1) “I can’t. I become a bitch on that shit.”

2) “Sure, let me have some” (just does a little, daughter probably won’t notice)

3) (stand in the doorway with a concerned look on her face, for upwards of sixty seconds)

Guess which one she picks? If I were the gang member, I would have shot her in the face right there on the spot. She’s freaking me out, and she’s wasting my time. Oh, and SHE’S PROBABLY LYING. Everything in this show is roughly that level of stupid, but for different reasons. Watch only if you like to be bored for thirty minute chunks, only to be broken up by absurdly vigorous sex scenes. Shit…now you’re going to watch it, aren’t you.

-Ryan Haley