FALL TV EXTRAVAGANZA

 

GUYS WITH KIDS

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

Close your eyes and imagine how good a show named Guys With Kids is. Think about how many times you laughed? Zero? Less than zero? Do you think it could be so unfunny that it actually took away a laugh from an episode of Parks and Rec from last season? You’re right, it really is that unfunny. But as we stare down yet another fall full of pilots featuring some of the worse garbage ever witnessed by man, resulting in you asking yourself “If these are the pilots that made it, I would hate to see what didn’t !” on a nightly basis, I would like to spend this year giving pilots a break, particularly comedies. The first episode of sitcoms have so many things to do that there isn’t really time to make you laugh. Every single comedy pilot I watch this season, I’m going to resign myself to the fact that I will not find any of it funny, which works out well for Guys With Kids, which features fewer laughs than Shoah. Let’s instead focus on all of the other responsibilities this first episode had, and if it handled them well or not.

 

It didn’t. It didn’t even come close. In fact, in came so far from accomplishing anything remotely clever or entertaining that by the time it was over I had stabbed myself in the leg with a screwdriver over seventy times. Thanks a lot, Guys With Kids. GWK, which it will be known for an entire week before it’s canceled, is the story of three guys with kids, and the wives and ex-wives in their lives. It’s made abundantly clear from the beginning that the kids will be given nothing to do, which I am totally OK with, so that leaves us with 22 minutes to tell us about six characters, three romantic relationships, and the relationship between the three friends, and the three plotlines that will get us through this first episode,  which is LITERALLY FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE TO DO. IMPOSSIBLE. THERE’S NO WAY THAT THAT CAN HAPPEN. SIX CHARACTERS?!? UMPTEEN RELATIONSHIPS?!? NO JOKES?!? Why, Guys With Kids? Why?

 

The good thing that can be said for Guys With Kids is that everyone involved knows what they’re making and have no higher aspirations to do anything else, which is, in fact, a fucking terrible thing. Trash like Guys With Kids remains unreviewable, because nobody would ever watch this, psychically knowing how terrible it is, and the few morons left on the planet (ten million or so in this country alone) are going to watch it no matter what I say. Fuck it. I hate everything. Fall can’t be over soon enough. – RH