The Funny Stuff: And we have our first cancellations

Tuesday was the inaugural FOX comedy review night, and it will be the last.  Here’s why.

Ben and Kate is a show that fails on so many levels.  The main characters are whiney and unlikeable.  They seem to hate the secondary characters, which is weird, seeing as they are supposed to be best friends.  And how do I know they are supposed to be best friend?  Straight up exposition.  “BJ, you’re my best friend, and I hate you” is half of an actual sentence that was uttered during the show.  I’ll let you figure out which half.  If writers want people to get engaged with a show, the characters need to be at least sympathetic, if not likeable.  I did not like a single person on that show, save the little girl.

This doesn’t even go into the issues I had with the story.  First off, we had the main character, Kate, tell someone(brother or best friend, I can’t remember which) that she doesn’t sleep with anyone anymore, that that behavior is in her past.  So what do we get in the very next scene?  Her deciding to sleep with her current boyfriend, because why not?  Characters need arcs that last more than five minutes, otherwise the whole thing feels cheap and forced, which this show did in spades.

I’m not going to go into the myriad of ways this show ripped off much better comedies, mostly because TWOP did it already, and you can go read that if you are so inclined.  So, 0 for 1 on the first comedy of the night, and this one ain’t coming back into my review rotation.  But what of the second show?

The Mindy Project

I so badly wanted to like this show.  Mindy Kaeling seems like a really nice person, and she’s funny, to boot.  But this show, man…it made me want to rip my hair out.

So, plot synopsis: Mindy, an OB/GYN doctor, is 31 and her life is out of control.  She wants to fix it, but continually stumbles into the same mistakes over and over again. The end.

In this pilot episode, she crashes her ex’s wedding, gets drunk and makes a crazy speech, and then gets arrested for public intoxication.  She vows to do better at life, and then sleeps with a coworker after a blind date goes horribly wrong in her head.  And that was it.

Putting it into words doesn’t really do the terribleness of this show justice.  All I know is I walked out after finishing this show, knowing I would never voluntarily watch it again.  And it’s a shame.