Unhitched: Pilot
By fred | March 3, 2008
(S01E01) So as announced last night, this Sunday on Fox premiered a new sitcom produced by no other than the Farrelly Brothers (There’s Something About Mary), who also directed this episode. And when I talked about it last night, I had only seen a couple of promo clips released by Fox, trying to make us want to watch the show. Sadly, though, those were absolutely horrible and unfunny. Which, for a sitcom, is like the worst thing possible ever.
Yet I went into this one with an open mind, ready and willing to enjoy it, should it be any good. I was hoping that maybe it was just that a bunch of morons over at Fox decided to select a few clips from when the show is not working, when it’s anything but funny, and to use such moments as promo clips because, well, they’re morons. This sounds like a very improbable scenario, it really does, and after watching the episode I think that I can say it : Fox people are morons.
There’s no question about it, because if those promo clips were really bad & not funny, they also do not illustrate in any way what the show is actually like. After those clips I feared that this show would be just another piece of garbage like we seem to be getting so much lately when it comes to sitcoms these days. Oh yeah, I was ready to rant about this new trend of unfunny sitcoms à la Welcome To The Captain or the newly bought We Need Girlfriends, where it’s nothing but a bunch of lame clichés put together, and there’s absolutely nothing funny in there.
Now that doesn’t mean that Unhitched is actually exempt from such a thing, because it is not. Much like CBS crappy shows aforementioned, Unhitched also featured one character whose personality and story was nothing but a fat cliché, one that’s been seen so many times already it really can’t be good anymore, and it wasn’t, good or funny. It was Dr. Freddy Sahgal, and his birthday spent in Las Vegas with a hooker whom he was going to propose to. What a piece of crap that was, I think I throw up a little in my mouth during thing shit.
But the show in itself seems to be suffering from a problem that’s not unusual in new series : an identity crisis. It hasn’t yet found its tone, what it wants to be and how it should be, it’s still looking for its own pace, its very unique tone that will set it apart from everything else, from all other sitcoms. It seems to be going from very classic (boring) plots (clichés) we’re all so familiar with, we’ve seen in other sitcoms and movies and commercials and everywhere else, to pure over-the-top Farrelly comedy.
Let me give you a hint as to where they should go : the opening scene, when Gator got “attacked” anally by a monkey, was freaking hilarious. It’s crazy, it’s stupid, it’s not realistic, it’s like nothing you’d find anywhere else, it’s very Farrelly and it’s freaking hilarious ! This is the kind of shit I want form this show, because it’s funny and I love funny shit, even if they don’t really make sense.
We already have lots of sitcoms that deal with very real characters and situations, and if Unhitched really wants us to make room for it in our hearts and busy TV schedule, it better not be just another sitcom about a bunch of friends hanging out together and commenting on their daily (dating) life. Take Kate, when she found out what “special job” the guy she was dating had, sure it may have had this little thing that reminded you of Seinfeld’s Elaine, when she realized she was dating no other than The Wiz, but it still had that over-the-top thing to it, and in a very Farrelly move we had the guy jumping up to players and catapulted on the field, and it was simply hilarious.
This is exactly the kind of things I’d like to see from this show.
In the end, I found this episode to sometimes work, and when it did it did very well and had me laughing out loud. I’m thinking of the opening scene with the monkey, the basketball scene, and when Gator realized that Tommy actually brought the girl home and that she was waiting in his bed. This conversation was also pretty damn funny for sure. But it also sometimes did not work, like for everything else basically : that horrible plot with Sahgal, Gator’s party where nothing funny actually happened there, or his crap with his (ex-)wife showing up, and whatever happened with the other wife waiting in his bed.
All in all, and maybe because I was expecting a real mess, I found myself pleasantly surprised, I like some of it and laughed a few times, yet it’s far from being all good. But it’s a brand new show, and as such it will require a few episodes to get things right and find itself. Let’s just hope they can do it right, and that trigger-happy Fox actually allow for it to happen, but we all know they love to cancel good shows with potential after only a few episodes…
