WELCOME TO SWEDEN / WORKING THE ENGELS

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

Watching NBC’s new summer comedy hour, including Welcome to Sweden and Working the Engels, has convinced me that my job writing about pilots has come to an end. It’s not because I have changed the world, and have clearly expressed – to both fans and networks – all of the ways a pilot can be impressive or horrible. It’s not because I’ve driven myself insane with the amount of exposition, forced characters, and horrible jokes I’ve witnessed since I first started doing this. It’s because NBC’s two shows, when watched back-to-back display everything that can go right and wrong in a pilot. It’s amazing how it is throughout the entire viewing process that Sweden is a quality product, and Engels is an unfixable mess.

What’s so amazing is that they both have the same jobs. They have to do the same things. Why did one work out so well, and the other one fall apart so quickly? There’s three things that need to be introduced in a pilot: the characters, the premise of the show, and the tone. How deftly these three are issues are handled will always tell you the quality of the pilot you’re watching, and sometimes tell you the quality of the show the pilot is for. On the podcast me and the friends will rate pilots, and then unnecessarily predict the rating the show will get in the future. Are we psychic? Do we have special TV powers? No. What we’re doing is grading the clunkiness of these introductions. If a show delivers a great premise, and proves to have a tight grasp about the type of show it is, but klunks out the character introductions, this might make for a mediocre pilot, but you can still see how it will become a good show. So, let’s line these fuckers up.

PREMISE

Again, I don’t care what your premise is. I care how you deliver it. If someone told you the pitch to Cheers or Roseanne or The Simpsons, you’d scream “WHO GIVES A SHIT” right into their fat face. And look how those turned out. It’s not the premise, it’s the delivery. Welcome to Sweden stars Greg (Amy’s brother) Poehler as a guy who quits his wealthy-ass life to move to Sweden, and live with his girlfriend’s family. Does the premise blow you away? No. Does it seem like it can be mined for comedy anyway? Probably, depending on how they do it. Check it:

Scene 1: Main character Bruce decides to move to Sweden.

Scene 2: Bruce arrives in Sweden

Scene 3-the rest: Wacky things happen in Sweden.

Shit, bitch. Of course that’s all you should do. Why would you ever do more? In a comedy? On NBC? What kind of asshole are you that you actually think that you’re capable of doing more, much less should?

And then there’s Working the Engels.

Scene 1: A lawyer (the always underrated Colin Mockery) tells a widow (Andrea Martin!?!) that her husband left her in a ton of debt. Then the widow inexplicably tells the lawyer about all three of her kids, and what they’re doing right now. The kids spend 22 minutes making their way back to their mother and their home town. At this point, we still have no idea what the premise is. By the end, the non-wacky daughter has decided to leave her potentially high-paying lawyer-job, and come work for the family firm, in order to get them out of debt. In a way, it’s the same premise as Sweden’s but we have to waste 22 minutes to figure that out. And by then, we can more accurately scream “who gives a shit?”

CHARACTERS

Bruce is the main character of Welcome to Sweden. He is the one being welcomed to Sweden. Once he arrives in Sweden, he meets each of his girlfriend’s family members, one at a time. He is us! We, as an audience, are also going to Sweden for the first time, and need to be welcomed! Not by everyone all at once, mind you, but one at a time. You know, like how people meet people. Each new character is assigned two traits, one that is obvious and easy to exploit for a quick laugh, and one that isn’t as obvious, and can be mined and explored as the series continues. For instance, Emma (Bruce’s Swedish girlfriend) has an uncle who is obsessed with American pop culture (something that brings about easy jokes), but is also a little weirder than that in some less obvious ways (something for us to learn about later). Characters who just have the obvious trait become immediately stale and boring, while it’s difficult for many people to attach themselves to someone who is all mystery.

Working the Engels introduces all of their characters in an easy-to-digest monologue to open up the show. Is this lazy? Yes. It is used all of the time anyway? Also yes, which makes it hard to pick on Engels too much for that fact alone. But the narration given is such an odd mishmash of convoluted backstory and hacky frontstory that any need to go easy on the show goes right out of the window. I said earlier that the widow Martin mentions each of her kids for no reason, but the reason is obvious. She needs us to know who each one of them is. And because they live far away from each other, and have to come back to their home town to start the premise of the show, they can’t use each other in the first episode to play off of each other, or as their foils. This is a plot point that we could do with a lot less of. It automatically shoots the show in the foot.

How should we start our story?

JUST START YOUR STORY.

But shouldn’t we make them all live far away from each other, so they have to come together in to start the story?

JUST START YOUR STORY.

If you started your story when the story begins (which will hopefully be the beginning of episode 2), then you don’t need the character introduction monologue. We will just watch the characters interact, and go from there. That’s all we need.

TONE

If you’re a fan of the comedies I’m a fan of (Parks and Rec, New Girl, Brooklyn 99, Veep, The Mindy Project), then you’ll recognize Welcome to Sweden’s tone right away. Although both shows are one-camera, Welcome to Sweden feels more like it. Engels is very broad and loud, and without their need to have a narrator explain characters, probably would have felt more at home with a laugh track. But my point isn’t that Welcome to Sweden is higher up my alley than Engels is, thereby making one show good and one show bad. Just like with premise, it isn’t about which tone you choose but about how successful you display it. Sweden is quiet, and dry, and lets their characters tell their jokes. There aren’t major life lessons, and there isn’t a ton of pandering. Engels, however, feels like it passed through dozens of executive’s hands before it finally got to us. It’s so all over the place that it’s hard to give the show too much shit, because if you have no idea what a show was trying to do, how can you say it did it badly? Ultimately, this is what won’t get you that bonus rating on the podcast when we try to predict your future. Premises and characters are easy to tweak and replace, but it takes someone smart and talented to change a show’s tone once it’s already been established. Of course there’s some exceptions, but all signs point to Working the Engels being a frenzied mess for the rest of its five week run.

See? It’s not that hard. Welcome to Sweden tells its story in the way only it can, with a firm grip on its tone and endearing, funny characters.

Working the Engels doesn’t.

 

– Ryan Haley