Round 1

BENCHED

VS

MIKE TYSON’S MYSTERIES

Eliza Coupe (Happy Endings), Jay Harrington (Better Off Ted), Oscar Nunez (The Office), and Maria Bamford is as much of a head start as a one camera sitcom can ask for. And it isn’t like Benched squanders all of the good will it is afforded by that cast. The pilot motors, setting up our main character, destroying her life, and then pointing towards episode 2 and beyond. It does a decent job of introducing us to all of the supporting characters, showing us how they’re just like other television characters you’ve seen, while offering you a glimpse at how they will eventually blossom into something a little different. And it feels just unpolished enough to not feel too tryhardy, which is a boon for the USA network and their future of producing one-camera sitcoms. The problem – which came as a shock to me, just as it will you, dear reader – is Eliza Coupe.

It may be Nina, Eliza Coupe’s character, that’s the problem and not the actress herself, but she was able to define her comic persona so perfectly in Happy Endings that at this point it’s hard to separate the two. Therein lies the problem. For most of the episode, it seems like her comic persona is doing battle with other Ninas that had been written in the show’s past. Maybe Nina was a very different character in an old version of the script, and they reshaped it when Coupe was cast. Or maybe this is just yet another case of piloititis, in which the first episode of flails to settle into its eventual tone, and Eliza Coupe is the shining beacon of evidence. No one seems sure exactly who or what her character is. Is she tough? Is she a fuck up? Is she a clutz? Is she fake? Is she a puss? Is she in the middle of a mental breakdown, or is she always this nuts? All of these situations can create laughs, but not all of them at the same time. Towards the end of the episode, Jay Harrington’s character gives Coupe a pep talk, telling her not to let her ex-fiance turn her into a dope, and be the strong character she actually is. Harrington should tell that to the show runners as well.
Benched is fine, but Mike Tyson’s Mysteries features Mike Tyson, his teenage adopted daughter, a foppish ghost, and a man who was turned into a pigeon, driving around solving mysteries. The first episode finds them getting hired to write an ending to Cormac McCarthy’s newest book, only to end up riding on McCarthy’s horseman body (I didn’t say centaur, I said horseman!) and flying off into the sunset. It’s was ten minutes of magnificence, and it moves on to Round 2.

– Ryan Haley