The Snark Ladies have decided to tell you a little bit about what they think of this Fall season’s new TV shows. In part one, we talk a bit about the shows that premiered last week.
Sleepy Hollow on FOX (Mondays 9/8c)
In a nutshell: So there’s this guy, right? And he’s fighting in the Revolutionary War all heroic and brave like, right up until some creep with a metal mask comes over to stab him. In his dying moments, this guy (Ichabod Crane) goes down swinging and manages to chop off the head of the creep with the mask. He dies, and if that weren’t sucky enough, Ichabod Crane is rudely awakened from his grave 250 years later, and soon falls right into an epic mission: the Headless Horseman is back as well, and in the year 2013, it seems that everyone likes their horsemen with heads and generally not going around killing people and being apocalyptic. Ichabod teams up with Lt. Abbie Mills to figure out WTF is going on.
What Lorraine Thinks: This show is batshit crazy. And I mostly mean that as a compliment. I have plenty of questions about where this show will go in the future, but we’re here to talk about the pilot. The pilot was entertaining. And crazy. The strangest thing of all, though, was how hot I found Ichabod Crane. I feel like I shouldn’t be checking a guy out while he’s climbing out of the grave, you know? Alas, what sells the goofiness of this entire man out of time premise is Ichabod’s charm. You might even call that fella downright snarky.
The character who made the second best impression died in the opening five minutes. I resented that.
I cannot tell you how delightedly confused I was when the Headless Horseman whipped out a MACHINE GUN. If you are going to be resurrected in 2013, might as well ditch your axe, amIright?
The fun thing about pilots is that they have to have a certain amount of bad built in. In the Sleepy Hollow pilot, the bad for me came in the form of the required skepticism. I know that there had to be a certain about of disbelief coming from every character that didn’t wake up in a grave after 250 years, but once the show brought up how fucking impossible the entire premise is, it kind of pushed it aside too quickly. Either we’re not going to believe our eyes are we are, but the whiplash on the subject was a low point for me.
What Sweeney Thinks: I don’t have much to add beyond general agreement with what you’ve said. The show is all sorts of ridiculous but it acknowledges the absurdity of its premise. I think I was a little less bothered by that whiplash than you were, though. Taking this concept and spinning it into a season long thing where Abbie is the only one who knows and is herself very suspicious and yadayadayada. It wouldn’t be nearly as interesting that way. I appreciate how very self-aware and up front this show is about the leaps of faith it was asking us take. I’m not entirely sold on the ending, though, for somewhat similar reasons. For all the crazy in this episode, the really intense plot info dump at the end of the episode was the crazy-step-too-far for me.
Then, of course, there’s the supremely gorgeous and charming Ichabod Crane. The point of the pilot is to convince me to keep watching. I’m sufficiently intrigued to see where we’re going to take all this madness. Mission accomplished.
Overall Grade: B+
Dads on FOX (Tuesdays at 8/7c)
In a nutshell: “My racist, sexist, asshole dad is the worst.” “NO. MY RACIST, SEXIST, ASSHOLE DAD IS THE WORST.” LOL.
What Lorraine Thinks: I actually sat through the entire 20ish minutes of this pilot episode and I was offended quite a few times, the first time being when I heard the laugh track and the second was at seeing Seth Green. NO, OZ. NO. Unfortunately, that was just the very beginning.
Plenty has been said around the webz about Dads, and its brand of stereotype based humor. In 20 minutes, this episode managed to make the following jokes: woman in the kitchen, Asian woman in the work place being made to dress up as a school girl, Asian woman in the workplace promoting herself after dressing up sexily, Asian woman in the workplace being made to giggle and stand around sexily during an investor meeting, Chinese people are untrustworthy, a Shiite Muslim joke, “punch the Puerto Rican” is inexplicably said, Hispanic woman in the kitchen is called “the maid,” a Chinese-men-have-small-penises jokes, and a “show me your gay guy” is dropped in the workplace.
IN 20 MINUTES. It’s astounding to me that a lot of the reaction I’ve seen so far has been, “this was offensive… and unfunny.” This HuffPo article claims, “As a master of rawness, tastelessness and low blows, MacFarlane is a love-him-or-hate-him kind of humorist whose fans (and I count myself among them) see his offensiveness, when he’s on his game, as overwhelmingly redeemed by laser-sharp insight and a grand fearlessness. And hilarity.”
This Forbes article confused me, as the author says that perhaps the “original script was hilarious, and the tone was lost in translation,” and in the next line offers, “The racism and sexism definitely didn’t translate well (does it ever?)…” I don’t know, DOES IT? You seem to think there is a possibility the original script was hilarious.
I’m even further confused by this AV Club article that claims “what becomes rapidly clear is that Dads may be racist and sexist, but it’s not racist and sexist by design. Instead, bad execution makes it so.”
I’d like to disagree with all these sentiments. I’m not going to pretend that I’ve never laughed at something offensive. I know there is plenty of comedy out there that relies heavily on exposing, making fun of or exploring sterotypes. Dads does none of the above. The problem with the pilot was that none of it had a point. It was a rapid fire list of offensive humor that went nowhere and was never addressed again. Seth Green’s character was the only one to acknowledge that things were not okay and his line was only, “that’s not funny.” Well, no. It isn’t, but is that really the problem?
I think that bad execution and tone are beyond the point. I can’t see that there was a way to only ever show us Vanessa Lachey in the kitchen and with an apron on in the right tone, for example. I don’t understand why people are scrambling to think of how this show could’ve been better. I don’t understand why people are making excuses or sneaking in sentiments of, “this show did bigotry wrong.”
I don’t understand why we have to make the two separate points of, “this show sucked,” and “this show is racist and sexist.” The quality of this pilot is irrelevant to me. It included the jokes I mentioned above, so that means I get to judge it on that basis. From me, it gets an F for, “fuck you.”
What Sweeney Thinks: UGH. OK. So. When Lor first mentioned doing a Fall TV Wrap Up, my response was: “I NEED TO RAGE OUT ABOUT DADS.” Except now I don’t have that much raging out to do because you’ve said all the things I wanted to say. (WAY TO STEAL MY RAGE THUNDER.)
I wanted to like this show for Seth Green’s sake. I was excited when I first saw the commercial. I also find Brenda Song adorable and it’s cool to see her doing non-Disney Channel things. She was probably the best part of the episode for me — when I wasn’t cringing about the inappropriateness of everyone around her. I also love a good sitcom and this basic premise could have been good.
Seth MacFarlane is a douche, and calling his humor a thing you either get or you don’t is a nice way to excuse his bullshit, and cry foul on behalf of the poor white guy always being called upon to be politically correct. (This is the same guy who managed to take an awful, stupid concept like “We Saw Your Boobs” and make it through-the-fucking-roof inappropriate by mentioning names whose boob scenes were also rape scenes. Classy guy, that one is.)
The bigotry of the two fathers is the centerpiece of the show, with doses of bigotry and misogyny from the sons to boot. Add to it that the delivery of this trashy material was always a little stilted and the timing was never quite right. (As if nobody doing it could really commit themselves to the bullshit.) Song, Green, and Ribisi all had a few moments that were chuckle-worthy, but it wasn’t enough to save a show that all-around sucked and made my skin crawl. That pilot episode mission of bringing me back? Failed.
Overall Grade: F
Brooklyn Nine Nine on FOX (Tuesday 8:30/7:30c)
In a nutshell: A team of zany comedians detectives solve crimes while being zany. Then they get a new captain who wants them to chillax with the zaniness and focus on the crime solving. This is a comedy, so that doesn’t really happen.
What Lorraine Thinks: We’re used to terrible cops around here, so getting to watch funny and zany but overall effective cops was nice for a change. The beginning was a little slow for me, and a bit cheesy (“the only case he hasn’t solved is growing up.” GROAN. STOP IT.) but by the end I was pretty won over. Some of the characters are a little trope-y but all said and done, it was funny. I’d watch again, should I be available, but I don’t know that this pilot cemented the show on my must-watch-TV-list.
What Sweeney Thinks: I loved it. Sort of. It wasn’t “BEST SHOW EVAAA” status, but I watched it immediately after Dads and it really helped me get past that unfortunate experience. This is the kind of sitcom ridiculousness that I can get behind. I dug the entire cast of characters. Jake (Andy Samberg’s character) could stand to be a tiny bit less Andy Samberg, but otherwise it was delightful. The humor hit the mark and actually, you know, made me laugh.
I’m not going to say it’s one of the best shows on television, but it was good, light-hearted fun. It’s a great cast and decent writing. This show is the brainchild of some people from Parks & Recreation. I’ll say right now that it’s not on that level. It is, however, a promising start. Speaking of Parks & Rec, though, the first season is definitely it’s weakest. The show took a second to hone in on its ideal rhythm, and establish all the required emotional investment in its characters. I have a feeling that this will be the same. The pilot was decent and I enjoyed it, but I’m mostly recommending this show with the caveat that I expect it to take a few episodes to hit its stride. I’m willing to give this show high marks on credit.
Overall Grade: B+
Tune in next week to hear what the Snark Ladies thought of the premiers this week, including Hostages, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, and The Crazy Ones.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
