Unhitched: Pole-Dancing Toddler
By fred | March 31, 2008
(S01E06) Last night was only the sixth episode of new sitcom Unhitched, but with the strike and all, it was already the season finale. For sure that was a really brief season, and sadly it never did do so well so it could very well turn out to be a series finale as well. No official word yet from Fox on whether the show has been canceled or renewed, but the odds are more for the former sadly.
Anyhow, this was the last episode for this season at least, and while the show is still flawed in every way it has been ever since the very first episode, after watching this episode I would say that this was probably the funniest episode of all. I won’t say the best, because it is highly flawed and it prevents me from really having a good time for the full half hour, but I laughed a few times, for sure.
And it started during the opening scene, which, I would say without having actually checked, might be the first time ever on this show I laughed during a scene involving Sahgal. Although it might have to do with the fact that all the funny bits came from the girl he was dating for a couple of seconds here, but he had nothing to do with it, so that helped a lot I would imagine.
Then we moved on to a scene which soon involved a rat, and that was without a doubt the funniest moment of the entire episode. I started laughing when Tommy tried to kick it out only to have it ending up on Gator, but once that little thing ran into the microwave and they all started to stare at each others, I was on the floor. Thank God they didn’t actually show anything, like they once did when Kate went to a restaurant in the dark, because it would have ruined it.
That was hilarious, and I really loved it. Sadly, this was not only the best of all the laughs this episode provided us, but pretty much the last one. Not exactly the last one, being when Tommy just jumped out of the car while “teaching” Sahgal how to drive I did laugh, but the rest of the episode wasn’t anywhere near as funny. And I think this has mainly to do with things I’ve already mentioned about this show, but that sadly they never try to fix.
For starter, Sahgal is an annoying character, filled with clichés, stereotypes, and boring “unfunnyness” attached to him. Sometimes I wonder if he really is a doctor, because there’s no way he has a functioning brain…
But the main problem of the show is that it is all highly predictable, all the time. Because every single episode can be summed up saying that by one or more of the characters will try and go on a date with someone new, only to have things not working out and end up alone again by the end of that very episode. So you knew from the start that it wouldn’t work out for Gator and the new neighbor, and that it wouldn’t either for Kate and her new guy.
Knowing this, and that both dealt with rats and other animals, it wasn’t really hard to figure out where this was eventually heading way before it actually happened.
Then, the rest was so predictable it really had everything be pretty boring. Of course Gator was lying about his love for animals, of course he didn’t care one bit about any of that crap. So when he mentioned going to a protest, we knew that it would blow up in his face, there was no way around it, Hell even they knew it, and had Kate to say it out loud.
But her saying it wasn’t funny, neither was to actually see it happening. And this might be because it did in the most predictable and boring way possible : of course there’s a reporter there, and of course they’re asking Gator of all people there, and of course he’ll mess up and then do something “crazy” to try and impress the girl, and of course in the end everything will blow up in his face as predicted : with Tommy cooking to lobster, revealing that he blew up the rat, and cared more about having a great shampoo than any rat he may have been tested on.
And again, we knew that both Gator and Kate would end up still alone by the end, it’s always the case 100% of the time, and it really wasn’t hard to see that both their dates would end up together. So while it started well and was pretty funny, it soon turned into something a lot more boring than anything else, unfortunately.
And that’s the problem of this show, while it may not have every episode go through a strict formula, there’s still a pretty good set of rules every episode does follow, which render the thing very boring and much less funny. That’s never good, but for a sitcom that may be even worst. I wouldn’t mind a second season, but seeing how the show never tried to evolve and break out of those rules, and how it numbers were never really good and never stopped going down, I’m guessing this was probably the series finale.
Well, at least it had a few moments that were really hilarious and had me rolling, and that’s a lot more than The Return Of Jezebel James can say…
