Mimi Rogers provides the only life in Fox' The Loop or, as we like to think of it, The Limp. This half-hour sitcom has been on just about every night of their programming and still can't seem to firm up an audience.
That may have to do with the so-so writing and some lousy casting. It also isn't aided by a really bad "concept." Here's the concept: 20-something has one foot in the corporate world and one foot in the world of PAR-TAY!
Possibly, someone looked at it and thought, "Hybrid!" If so, it's not a good-for-the-environment hybrid. It gives off far too many noxious fumes to be that.
What is it? It's The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a really, really bad version. See Mary went to work at the TV station and Sam (Brett Harrison) goes to work for an airline corporation. Mary went home to Phyllis and Rhoda who lived in the same house that was converted to apartments -- Phyllis was actually management of the building, along with Lars, but we didn't learn that until well into the series. In fact, that's part of the problem with The Loop, you learn everything in any episode. Pick an episode, it's all on display.
That's due to the fact that the characters, as written, have no layers and most of the performers have no ability to add textures. What you see is completely what you get.
What do you see? Eric Christian Olsen is not the third member of the Mary Kate and Ashley matching set, but his acting convinces you that, on some level, he is their spiritual brother. He plays Sully. You've seen Sully everywhere. He comes under many names. He's never a character, just a stereotype and, here, he's just wasting everyone's time. The problem's not that Sully's a slacker (The New Old Christine and Free Ride both have slacker characters you can enjoy), it's that the writers haven't filled in the blanks for Sully and Christian Olsen either can't or won't. May he have success in another show, but this one's history.
Sully is one of three roomates Sam has (four is company too?). If there's anyone worse than Sully, it's the character of Lizzy who appears to be blend of Chrissie from Three's Company and
Bambi from Welcome Back Kotter. Sarah Mason is more a Teri Copley than a Suzanne Sommers and she never appears to know who Lizzy is from one moment to the next -- a problem when you're the actress playing her. Is she stupid-sweet, stupid-mean, stupid-stupid, the writers don't know and Mason either doesn't know or doesn't care. The latter option will be the audience's reaction to her performance.
While Mason is about as lively as a corpse in any perp walk TV show, Sam's third roomate may be who you're wondering about? Let's kill the suspense. It's the Joyce Dewitt role. No one cares. No one ever cares. Which is why when one episode it's the voice of practiciality and the next it out dumbs the blond, no one raises an eyebrow because no one cares.
To varying degrees, all par-tay, par-tay, PAR-TAY! Sometimes that means getting an academic tutor to hop in the hot tub (filled with NAIR) to get rid of the long wisps of hair all over his body (fortunately, we're only shown the back, chest and shoulders -- quite enough, thank you.) Sometimes that means putting everything aside, we're headed to the bar for shots! And maybe after to a pig stye because what's a wild night of drunken fun without wrestling a pig?
Someone thought it would be funny.
But it never is. Maybe because four White kids trying to "make it" in a spacious apartment doesn't make for the six Friends. (But the economic struggles there were generally confined to one character struggling a season.) Maybe because they all seem to have so much money (until it's time to spend it on academics) that you really don't give a damn about them as they move from one drunken haze to another and don't even get any good sex out of it. (Or even bad sex.) Next on Fox! When Celibates Get Drunk!
Someone thought it was wild and crazy. Probably the same someone who thought we needed to see Eric Christian Olsen not just shirtless -- but in a what had to be a g-string. (A thong should offer more coverage.) Sully has an obsession about panties. Not only does he wear them, he also likes to talk about them. About them riding up on him, mainly. If the 'bland creeps' was the emo he was going for, he has succeeded. The audience is left disgusted by Christian Olsen's character and performance. His agent is left to try to convince others that Christian Olsen can really act. We wonder who suffers more?
When not stuck in the wanna be Animal House (whose inhabitants, unlike this show's, did have sex, did have adventures), Sam goes to work. He's PAR-TAY boy by night, corporate slave by day. The office is populated with a wretched cast. Chief among the offenders is Philip Baker Hall who apparently never met a line he didn't like better if he could shout it. Which is why he shouts every line. He plays the boss, Russ and, at seventy-four, that may be one of the most unbelievable things about the office. He's always got a gay "joke" or a Chippendales joke or any other insulting joke in the world to tell. Which makes you wonder why he wasn't forced into retirement long ago. He doesn't do anything but lead meetings. (In which, Sam always finds the problem with a projection or proposal.)
If you were spared the shower scene between Russ and Sam, consider yourselves lucky. We think the term used, when Russ was gazing at Sam's groin, was "man hairs." Two actors could probably pull it off, even make it funny. Those two actors are obviously not Baker Hall and Harrison.
Forget the other dull males, Joy Osmanski plays Darcy (the receptionist) and she's actually funny. Her punishment for that must be "little screen time." Mimi Rogers plays Meryl and she's walking all over the place (and all over her co-workers). It's an amazing performance by Rogers who is shaping it with no help from the writers. Meryl's a sexual predator. To the point that she's verbally harrassing (sexually) Sam in episode after episode. The looks Rogers gives and the way she delivers the lines make them so much more than the writers intended.
If they were smart, they would have figured out already that Meryl actually has to do something at some point. Yeah, it's sexual harrassment and it's against the law. We're not disputing that. But what she's saying to Sam is already sexual harrassment. Get her off the treadmill and let her move forward already.
While Meryl's devouring Sam with her eyes, Brett Harrison appears to be attempting to figure out his character -- on air. Let's break it down for Brett, he's a nebbish. He's Miles from Murphy Brown as the lead. And who would watch that? Exactly.
Harrison is the focus of Rogers and various other female guests (Adam Brody, playing a same-sex oriented character, didn't show a flicker of interest) only because he's been cast in the lead.
There's nothing interesting about him. All the layers and laughs that Free Ride offers have been stripped away from The Loop and chief among the bland is Brett Harrison. Harrison is probably better looking than Josh Dean, in a cartoon way. Cartoon describes the acting as well. You may wonder, as we did, whether he studied with Charo?
If there's a funny moment to be found in a scene, Harrison will kill it with broad reactions. Where Dean can compress and compress making you anticipate the explosion, Harrison just grins blankly as though all he has to do is recite the lines and BAM! he's an actor. It's not that easy.
The Loop isn't easy to watch. Watch it for Mim Rogers but be prepared for the fact that she's always at the starting line and the writers never allow the race to start. Maybe Harrison is your idea of hot? Someone thinks so as he's shown in underwear, shirtsleeve-less (his sleeves are ripped off in one episode) or shirtless (with a black bra drawn on him -- it was supposed to be funny) or naked (as much as broadcast TV will show you). Someone is obviously quite taken with Harrison, but it's not the audiences. He comes off as having far fewer dimensions than Miguel of Maya & Miguel (the PBS animated cartoon).
We're not sure which is the bigger mystery -- how Fox ended up being convinced this was a show to air or how anyone thought Harrison could carry a show? One thing we know is that the show stinks of cancellation.