THE 2015 POPFILTER TV CHALLENGE:

MARCH MADNESS

 Follow the tournament here!

Round 1

ONE BIG HAPPY

VS

iZOMBIE

            On paper, the winner of this battle was obvious. Even if One Big Happy was an awful throwback sitcom, it had to be better than iZombie. Right? Produced by Ellen, created by one of her main writers, and starring the effervescently hilarious Elisha Cuthbert, One Big Happy plants its flag firmly in the growing category of, “this is what a family is now motherfuckers” sitcoms. iZombie is: A- another fucking zombie entity, B- “adapted” from a comic, which here means the title was taken and almost everything else dropped, and C- the kiss of death–a goddamn police procedural. No matter how bad One Big Happy could be I was certain it would skate by the quickly drowning iZombie. I’m a fucking idiot.

There’s something off throughout the pilot of OBH. It’s not just that none of them are sure exactly how to read the jokes, and the director seemingly took the first pass and moved on. It’s not just that the one Ellen joke thrown in here, they all pause and comes THIS close to winking at the audience for how fucking great they think it is (though to be fair, after a minute of watching this show, one Ellen joke is showing a lot of restraint). It’s not just that every other line is exposition-ally telling us who the characters are instead of just trusting us to pick up their super original personalities. It’s not just that most of the actors seems like they’ve been Photoshopped into the scene with each other, rather than actually responding and reacting to one another. Wait… it’s that last one. If I had to pick the biggest glaring flaw, it’s the complete lack of chemistry between any of the characters. Even my main squeeze Elisha can’t make it gel with her costars. She’s selling the jokes, and at times had me, but the minute there’s verbal interaction, everyone becomes wooden, like 4^th graders on the opening night of Midsummer Night’s Dream. The one exception is Kelly Brook, as Prudence, the British bombshell Cuthbert’s best friend and straight baby daddy hooks up with. Prudence as character is generic and stupid, Kelly Brook as Prudence breathes a life into her and forces the other characters to fucking look her in the eyes and react. And not just to the naked scenes.

I know we’ve said it before, but damn it, we’ll say it again. Laugh tracks must die. And unless they figure out a way to make them work without a laugh track, multi-cam sitcoms need to die. Every year a different writer/actor/producer says how much they loved multi-cams growing up, and how some of the best shows EVER have been multi-cams. This is true. But some of the best novels ever were written with quill, and that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to do so in this day and age. The rhythms are off, the characters ring false, and the shows look cheap. Put multi-cam in the fucking ground for good Big TV.

iZombie on the other hand is a phenomenal pilot. It knows exactly what it wants to do and say, and executes it by the end of the episode rather than the end of the first season like most shows. To get a more in depth take on the show, listen to this week’s Super Hero Hour Hour here. iZombie moves on to the final four!!

NEXT in ROUND ONE:

NETFLIX’S BLOODLINE TAKES ON COMEDY CENTRAL’S BIG TIME IN HOLLYWOOD!