ENLISTED

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

Sometimes, when watching a pilot, it’s hard to tell if a show is flailing, grabbing onto whatever it can from other, superior shows in the hope you’ll recognize something you like and keep watching, or if it’s actually creating its own, new thing. The fact that you can’t tell between these two things – or that your mind keeps switching throughout the pilot – might sound like a knock, but sometimes you have to remember you’re watching a pilot, and everyone, including you, is figuring out everything together. The pilot for Enlisted, FOX’s new army comedy, is one of the more confusing pilots I’ve ever seen. This has nothing to do with the plot – young children will have no problem following the story – but it’s confusing just trying to answer the question of what this is. This confusion makes everything more compelling though, as the parts that work show a lot of promise, while the things that didn’t work made me grimace less than I thought.

Geoff Stults plays Pete Hill, an army superstar who is pulled out of Afganistan after punching a superior officer. He is reassigned to “Rear-D”, which means he works on an army base in Florida, helping out the families other soldiers have left behind. He thinks it’s a gig for schmucks and losers and, based on the unit he’s in charge of, he’s right. It’s that group of people we’ve seen in a billion movies, mostly in the eighties: eight to ten people of varying size, shape, gender, and ethnicity, and none of them cool. There’s a layer of eighties coating the entire show, as the ragtag group of soldiers goes from a group of people who can barely stand up, to potential war games winners, to the group that best represents the entire point of something like “Rear-D.” It’s sloppy and gooey, but you can’t take your eyes away.

The center of the show lies in Pete’s relationship to his two brothers, Sarcastic Soldier and Dumb Soldier, who are also (of course) in the unit. Their dad died in war when they were just kids, which began a bond that has started to dissipate since Pete has been in Afghanistan. By the end of the episode, the threesome are back to being as close as they ever were. Jaded, Sarcastic, and Dumb are three types of sitcom characters we’ve seen a billion times, so it’s going to come down to the performances and chemistry to pull these three off. It doesn’t work entirely, but there’s potential there.

Stults is fine as Jaded. He probably won’t win a ton of Emmys for the role, but he handles the thankless parts of it. Chris Lowell plays Sarcastic, an even more thankless role, thanks to the still overbearing shadow of Bill Murray in Stripes. (If you think my Stripes comparison is forced, wait until you hear the soundtrack.) Lowell has the necessary speech pattern down, but the writers too often leave his dialogue biteless. The potential star here is a guy named Parker Young, who plays the Dumb brother. Instead of just messing up the occasional long word, or running into a wall every once in awhile, Young has created a three dimensional character through sheer enthusiasm. When things get a little too cheesy or cliche, Young is usually good for a laugh or so to ease the pain.

The show isn’t as funny out of the gate as Brooklyn 99 was. It too often has flat lines in the shape of jokes that don’t have any real laughs attached. I have no idea if this pilot will resemble what the show will be like in a couple weeks, but I’m interested either way. Either it calms down and fixes its flaws, which could make for a pretty decent show, or it is in the midst of creating some sort of new, throwbacky comedy, and that might just work too.

– Ryan Haley