Unhitched: Conjoined Twins Pitch No-Hitter
By fred | March 17, 2008
(S01E03) So far I’ve had mixed feelings about this new sitcom. Quite a few things I didn’t like so much, but others had me rolling on the floor ! So there’s some pretty good stuff in there, and there’s room for improvement. This is already a much better thing that can be said about other new sitcoms, yes I’m thinking of The Return Of Jezebel James for instance, which had not one thing funny in it so you have to wonder, can it really improve with time - and will it ever have time, especially on Fox.
But for this new comedy produced by the Farrelly Brothers there’s reason to hope, and more than that there’s already reason to tune in each week. So I was glad to get to watch a new episode of this show, curious to see whether it would be better, worst, or just about the same as previous episodes. Especially since after being surprised to like the first episode a lot more than I expected to, the last one was pretty bad.
This was episode much better already. Of course, there’s nothing like a totally hilarious opening scene to get me in the mood. It’s stupid idea, but a really funny one, that scene in the dark. During the actual fight, the one we didn’t get to see, I was laughing like crazy. But I have to say, I feel like they ruined it by turning the lights back on the way they did.
It was a much better thing to leave the entire thing to our wild imaginations, and not show us anything. That shot going the entire place with everything trashed, actually ruined it for me. It wasn’t really funny, and actually broke the magic of the unknown we had had from bring in the dark so far. I think that if they had turn the light one only directly on a close-up to Kate, ringing and asking for a napkin, without showing us anything else from that room, the effect would have been even better.
Anyways, that scene was pretty good still, and I couldn’t have been happier to find myself laughing again while watching this show. Sadly, this feeling wasn’t always there during the fill half-hour, and came and went. The way this show is constructed feels quite different to (most) other sitcoms, in that it almost feels more like a succession of sketches “à la” SNL than like an actual sitcom.
I know there’s actually a story that goes all along the episode, but what we get to see is a little bit, then we move on to another bit using the Google Maps view, and so on. There isn’t a real continuity like you find in elsewhere, and it’s not that it’s a bad thing in itself, but when the actual bits we get to see aren’t funny, well it feels just like when watching SNL and the bits aren’t funny… and that’s no good.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again : Sahgal is the worst character of the bunch, I’m getting closer and closer to really hating him. It’s not really him (or is it?) but the way his character is written : he’s dumb. But he’s not dumb-funny, behaving like an idiot which makes him be or do funny things, now he’s dumb-dumb, behaving like an idiot which makes him looks like a moron and gets us pretty annoyed or bored, at best. Joey wasn’t always the brightest, but at least it was for the benefit of the show, here there is just no benefit.
Adding to that the fact that he’s mostly involved in stupid cliché plots, and the poor guy hasn’t things easy. Take that scene by the end of the episode, in the hospital. It’s such a freaking boring cliché that even before we see them at the hospital we’re already thinking, oh God there’s gonna go there, she’ll be there too, he’s going to lie… and that is exactly what’s happening. Bo-ring.
But what’s worse is that Sahgal is ruining thing for him by repeating what he was told not to repeat, and he’s doing that while he knows the girl, he’s seen her before and he knows Gator likes her. Which makes him even more stupid, and makes the whole thing even worst. All the scenes involving Sahgal were really awful, the bar, the “party”, the hospital, all awful, none of it funny, those were the times I felt like watching some SNL bits that clearly aren’t working, at all.
Thank God the other bits were better. Tommy and Kate are much better character and had better stories. Sadly, it doesn’t mean they’re immune to some stupid clichés, like her pointing out Tommy as her boyfriend while she obviously knows he’s out flirting with anything that has boobs. But while what happened there wasn’t always funny, and quite a few things were highly predictable, at least some things did work, some things were really funny. and in the end, I enjoyed and laughed during this part of the episode.
I’ll end by saying that during the very last scene, I kinda hoped that she had hit him differently, I wanted her to raise her elbow higher and to see him falling off from the horse. Maybe not that easy to do, but maybe a bit more funny.
Overall I enjoyed this episode, but really I only enjoyed a part of it, the bits involving Kate & Tommy, because the rest of it was really bad. So the show is still already able to manage some good laughs, it just needs to improve and manage to do that for the entire half-hour. I’m guessing getting ride of Sahgal could help, a lot.
