UNDATEABLE

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

 

I honestly don’t know if I’ve reviewed this show before. It’s not that old, so there hasn’t been that much time for me to do so. A quick check of the website’s search feature doesn’t show anything, but the search feature on low-budge websites like this typically ain’t exactly google. Maybe I just really don’t want to review it. I didn’t want to watch it, and now that I have, I don’t want to review it. Not reviewing it means I watched a horrible show for no reason, but not writing a review after watching it means I can now spend less time thinking about a pilot that is among the worst I’ve ever seen. Fuck it. I’ll just do it again, and, if I find the other review, I’ll compare the two and see which version of me hated this show more.

 

Lots of shows aren’t that funny. How I Met Your Mother was never that funny, and I watched the whole damn run. True Detective had almost no laughs, and was still considered pretty good. It’s not all about getting or not getting laughs, even with comedies. Even with “comedies.” In the case of Undateable, it’s how it goes about not getting its laughs. We’ve been shitting on the tired format of the three-camera sitcom, and its inevitable laugh track, for years. There’s no need to rehash that. But we need to believe some things before we can commit ourselves to laughing to something. We need to believe characters and relationships and how they work with each other before we know what we’re laughing at. In a pilot – any pilot – that’s a lot to ask for. It takes a lot of work…and we can’t see the work being done. It’s hard, but it’s possible. Sometimes, though, shows think it’s too hard to even attempt, and they attempt to force into believing things without even trying.

 

In this Odd Couple-rehash (the only rehash more tired is Friends), we have the Peter-Pan-syndrome-forever-bachelor-sleazeball. And then we have the uptight nerd who is bad with women. (Stop watching when you’ve heard this one). The show tells us who we’re dealing with right away by telling us who we’re dealing with. Somehow, in this world, Sleazeball is great with chicks, and Nerd is so bad that he takes Sleazeball’s advice. When the episode starts, they have never met before. By the end OF THE FIRST EPISODE, they have fought, made up, become best friends, and moved in together. This is a hard, long story to organically tell. This means the show has to force us into gaining the knowledge that Sleazeball is a Sleazeball. But he’s great with women. And a good guy deep down. And why the fuck would we care about any of this? Wait…you’re not supposed to ask that part.
Undateable reeks of studio tampering. I don’t know if I think that because I still have some faith left in Bill Lawrence, who co-created the show, or because I still have a lot of faith that NBC would ever air anything unless they’ve tinkered with it until it became dog shit. Doesn’t matter. NBC is using this to close out the TV season by airing two a night until they run out, which is kind of like spraying that gross orange bathroom odorizer after the worst shit you’ve ever taken. Bad smells are bad smells, regardless of the order you spray them in. See you again in a couple of weeks, when I’ve once again forgotten whether or not I wrote about Undateable, and have to do this all over again. The show may not be called Undateable, but I will have to do this again. Kill me.

 

– Ryan Haley

 

PS – Only the Ron Funches fans that are absolute completists need to check this out. He will be more famous. He will find projects that suit his particular talents. This is not that.