TV Review: Four Kings? They're bluffing

NBC returned to a two hour line up of sitcoms on Thursday night. Based on the first week's ratings, the country did take notice. NBC, as noted by Kate Aurthur in Saturday's New York Times, found itself number one "among adults 18 to 49." The whole nation is not interested in endless questions about dead bodies with glimpses of "naughty" sex tossed in. (Is bondage the only sex Jerry Bruckheimer is familar with? Watching the original CSI viewers can be forgiven for wondering.)

Will & Grace remains on Thurday nights though now it leads (Joey's been benched). It's joined by The Office and My Name is Earl, transplanted from other nights, as well as the new show Four Kings. Four Kings?

They're bluffing. There may be three kings, time will tell on that, but there is one card that's a two. Yes, ace can be the lowest number in the deck, it can also be the highest. For that reason, we would never claim that Seth Green is the "ace." He is two with no surprises in store for anyone.

If an action can be conveyed by pointing, Green will convey it by stomping his feet, bulging his eyes, waving his arms and then pointing. His attempts at acting will exhaust you when they don't annoy you.

The new millennium has discovered it Squiggy, all hail Sonny Bono of 2006. Laverne & Shirley never resulted in a spin-off for Squiggy. A wise decision on the part of everyone involved. When Cher ended it with Sonny, ABC did attempt to provide a weekly hour of Sonny Bono. The nation has only recently begun the recovery process from that ordeal.

The show runners would be well advised to grasp that, despite all the inflated claims of Seth Green's popularity (it's non-existant at the box office), Green goes down best in small slices. The scenes of Barry (Green's character) without the other three men fell flat. Green's success, such as it is, on the big screen has revolved around playing a very minor character in the Austin Powers films. He is not a lead. Writing him as a lead is a path to failure.

Green was funny. Or rather, he was in funny scenes. Wearing heavy make up and hair clips was funny. Not because of anything Green said or did. (In fact when Barry became aware that two juvenile females had made him up in his sleep, the laughs stopped.) It was funny to watch the reactions of the other three leads.

The other three leads are Josh Cooke, Todd Grinnell and Shane McRae. Cooke plays Ben who's the tent pole for the show. All the reactions and actions revolve around Ben the way they revolved around Mary on The Mary Tyler Moore Show; however, Mary would have worn a better bathrobe than Cooke did in the most recently aired episode.

We'll also note that Cooke has an interesting hair style (we'll touch on this next week as well) that apparently is attempting a come back. Other than that, what can we say?

Cooke, Grinnel and McRae have talent and chemistry. They work very well together. Green remains the guest star. Last Thursday, he was playing Phoebe's boyfriend who didn't wear underwear. In the hands (or pants?) of any of the other three actors, it might have been funny. (Rebecca swears it would have been sexy if they'd given the bit to Cooke or Grinnell.) With Green, it was just disgusting.

That's the thing about Four Kings currently. It's a funny show. It's still finding its legs but it's funny. (Disclosure, we know people working on the show.) However, you can't share the good things about the show because you keep coming back to how awful Seth Green is. He's Jerry Van Dyke and we don't have thirty years to wait for Green to find a Coach. Does the show have many more episodes it can last with Green as a member of the cast?

Absolutely. Provided that they realize he is color to be added in a dash or a sprinkle. He is not a full meal. On Seinfeld, had he been lucky enough to have a significant role on Seinfeld, he would have played the Newman type character. Four Kings is Newman sharing an apartment with Seinfeld and it's not working.

He disrupts the natural flow everytime he opens his mouth. There are laugh getters and there are laugh stoppers.

Possibly Barry could move out and they could provide a "Fourth King" by crossover promotion with The Book of Daniel?

Something needs to be done. And it needs to be done quickly because as a "lead," he pulls the show down. Attempts to "humanize" him (via sad and touching moments) will not address the basic issue because the problem has nothing to do with the character of Barry, it has to do with that presentation of Green (we won't call it acting, it's there in every comic role and it's also his own irriating personality in real life).

Someone has convinced him that he is sexy, funny and unbeatable. Someone lied.

His fussy presentation and attempts at scene stealing mar every scene he's in. You never believe you're watching four friends interact; however, you do feel that Shecky Green's desperate to get one last round of yucks. When asked to tone it down in other roles, Green's been either unable or unwilling to do so. He honestly thinks he's the funniest thing in America.

(Again, someone must have lied to him.)

In the early days of Ellen (when it was still These Friends of Mine), Audrey was a guest. Viewers familiar with only later shows may not grasp why Ellen characterized Audrey as "the most life endangering force on the face of planet." For those who know the character only after became a regular and the character was radically altered, we'd suggest they study Green's Barry.

Barry was conceived as Ben's nemisis. (Again, the show revolves around Cooke's character.) A nemisis doesn't dominate the show. The scripts aren't written to provide Green with the opportunity to dominate this ensemble. But Green's so damn sure he's America's gift to comedy that he pulls out all stops to "enhance" the proceedings. That's going to bury the show.

We called around to friends who'd been show runners on other sitcoms (the paper of record would call that research -- no, we never tire of that joke). Five weighed in with opinions. One said recast Barry quickly. Another said write Green off the show. Three offered that there had to be a way to work with Green as part of the show since it was already airing. The one with the longest running sitcom to his credit (all five were males) said that they need to get Barry out of the shared apartment immediately. He spoke of an actor he was stuck with (due to a network insisting upon the actor) and how, in small doses, they were able to turn the actor into a semi-popular part of the show. (When the actor later attempted to play the same type of character in other shows, but as the lead, the actor quickly discovered how fleeting fame can be.)

That would require moving Barry out of the apartment, limiting him to a few scenes each episode and getting the point across that the other three, like the audience, did not care for Barry.

Unless that's done (or something similar) prepare to alternate laughter with flinching. All five spoke of "the damage" Green does to each episode. The laughs are flowing and then, if the target of the laughs isn't Green and he opens his mouth, the laughs stop. Immediately. The other three are seen as "likeable" by the five but that won't continue if a character the audience finds repulsive is seen as their equals. ("They'll be tainted by association," said one.)

Every now and then someone comes along intent upon breaking the sitcom "mold." (My Name Is Earl breaks nothing, but we're not referring to that show.) They'll try to make the lead a hated character and call that a "twist." If it is a twist, audiences have consistently demonstrated that they prefer their sitcoms served without a twist -- which is to say likeable lead characters. When you're expected to tune in each week for thirty minutes, you need to feel that you're watching people who reflect you. Archie Bunker was popular (the character) with some audience members who felt he was dead right in everything he said and did. Others could watch the show because, if Archie annoyed them, they could count on Gloria and Mike to call him on it.

Barry annoys, but he's not really called on it. (And Green's no Carol O'Connor.) Most people confronted with a Barry would either avoid him or tell him (loudly) to shut up. That the other three (Ben, Bobby and Jason) don't could turn the audience against them.

Which is too bad. The show trotted out an old, old plot for Thursday's episode. The bar scene. They called it one night stands but, in other times, it's also been the swinging singles episode (as when Penny Marshall made her first appearance on The Mary Tyler Moore Show). Ben had to "score" a one night stand. That's not really in the character's make up and what followed could have been cloying and so touching that you threw up. Cooke managed to provide enough tension to keep it funny. He's a lead. It was a smart decision to cast him as Ben. McRae is a strong physical comedian and no one seems to have noticed that yet. It's as though an anchor is weighing him down (the anchor that should be around Green's neck?) and he's being prevented from cutting loose. The only worry regarding Grinnell is that his timing has been so strong, from the start, that he may find himself with too many weak lines in each script and be told, "You can make it funny!" instead of everyone working to figure out what's wrong with the lines.

Thursday night, the three leads demonstrated at the bar why they were all alone. Bobby just knew "vibe" talk followed by silent staring was the way to interest the opposite sex. Jason felt his technique was the way to make a woman interested in him: offer a slight compliment followed by an insult. Both went home without bed mates. Ben did land one but, as is the character's nature, immediately attempted to turn the one night stand into a long term romance.

Meeting her parents, going away for the weekend and other things were immediately planned before the morning coffee. In a scene that we'd love to see a network air with women involved (but we'll settle for men since most shows tries to convince you that unmarried equals death), Jason and Bobby explained why Ben would be making a mistake to rush from one long term relationship back into another one.

If Ross was "divorce guy" on Friends, Ben is "relationship guy" on Four Kings. A few years ago, or on CBS at any given moment, the argument would have been based on women destroying fun or weighing you down or some other crap. Instead the argument was based upon taking the time to get to know yourself. (Again, we'd love to see the networks feature a scene like that among women.)

Three Kings are three guys trying to figure out where they fit in the world today. (Not only does Barry not fit, his routines are so outdated that Larry from Three's Company comes off as modern by comparison.) This is a show that men and women can enjoy. You're not going to feel like you've just been disrespected if a man's laughing at Charlie Sheen's latest assault on women, for instance.