Sitcoms are crowd pleasers . . . unless you're a member of The Water Cooler Set. Those too-cool-for-their-home-school types have done a lot to kill off humor on TV with their disdain and stupidity. We were reminded of that yet again when NETFLIX started airing THE CREW.
THE CREW, for any who don't know, is a sitcom whose production companies include Burrow Owl Productions, NASCAR Productions, Hey Eddie Productions and Broken Road Productions. That second company may be why many critics sneering at the show are calling it a NASCAR show. It's a workplace comedy and the work takes place in a NASCAR garage.
If you're a NASCAR fan, you'll probably enjoy cameos and references. Our own knowledge of NASCAR can be summed up in two words: Jeff Gordon. He does get a mention -- and we caught it -- but, if like us, you don't know much about NASCAR, that's fine, you don't need a data base to enjoy the sitcom.
And we think most people will enjoy the sitcom. THE KING OF QUEENS. Irritating, honestly, in its first years. That wasn't the fault of lead actors Kevin James and Leah Remini. It was the fact that sitcoms can take a few episodes to hit their strides. As that CBS sitcom built up its supporting players, it became an often very funny sitcom -- one of the few in the fat husband and skinny wife genre (another strong one in that genre was STILL STANDING). Kevin followed that up with the sitcom KEVIN CAN WAIT which was very erratic in season one. Season two upgraded guest star Leah into series regular and the show improved significantly; however, the audience had already bailed on the show.
The critics bailed on THE CREW before it ever aired. They think they're above NASCAR. (We're not sports fans, we don't think we're above NASCAR or any sport, we're just not sports fans.) They also think they're above sitcoms. It's amazing to watch these howler monkeys fall for the most generic and cookie cutter shows -- which sometimes add female nudity and sometimes don't -- while they repeatedly savage and attack the sitcom genre.
Is it sexism? Lucille Ball was the first true sitcom star and I LOVE LUCY (the show she and then-husband Desi Arnaz created) created the basic blue print for a strong sitcom -- a blue print that continues to be utilized to this day. Again, when other genres continue to use the same templates, it's not a problem for The Water Cooler Set but when it's a sitcom, they snarl and hiss. They have done more to destroy the American sitcom than anything else. Producers are afraid to go with a multi-cam show. We hear about it over and over. They know the critics will come gunning for them. So what? Every big sitcom in the 21st century has been a multi-cam based show. That's FRIENDS, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, WILL & GRACE, THE BIG BANG THEORY, TWO AND A HALF MEN . . .
But results don't matter, one producer loves to remind us. He cites TV LAND and the success it had with HOT IN CLEVELAND and other titles but it wasn't getting the critical respect so it switched to single-camera shows. It never had another hit sitcom. To this day, it has never had another hit sitcom.
That should tell everyone -- even the brain dead Water Cooler Set -- something.
Of the four most watched sitcoms on TV last season -- YOUNG SHELDON, MOM, THE NEIGBHORS and THE CONNORS, three were multi-cam. The audience didn't sour on them, just self-fancied 'hipsters' of The Water Cooler Set.
How does THE CREW shape up? It's actually very funny. Kevin is Kevin Gibson, the crew chief, Freddie Stroma plays the car driver Jake, Jillian Mueller plays Catherine, the new boss, Gary Anthony Williams plays Chuck, Aan Ahdoot plays Amir and Sarah Stiles plays Beth. All do a wonderful job carving out unique characteristics for their roles. A lot of care has gone into the ensemble and into the scripts. Andy Fickman did a strong job directing KEVIN CAN WAIT and does a strong job directing THE CREW.
Each episode develops the characters a little more. We thought we'd catch two or three to weigh in after a friend at NETFLIX asked us what we thought (critical consensus on this show has been savage). We ended up watching all ten episodes -- watching and enjoying.
Season two can only be better since two couples emerge at the end of the season -- a man and a woman in one and a woman and a penis in the other. Jake is just a walking penis, episode after episode. Season two may find new shadings for him or it may not.
We hope episode two of DEBRIS finds . . . something. Anything. The pilot was unwatchable. How it ever made it to air is something NBC should answer for. They should also answer if, looking back now, they realize what a mistake it was to cancel THE EVENT? That show actually pulled in an audience. Despite months and months of heavy promotion the audience did not show up. The small number of people that showed up became smaller and smaller at each 15 minute interval.
We understood that, we explained to an NBC vice president. We repeatedly had to stop the show ourselves. We powered on through but we cannot remember a worse pilot in the last twenty years. And we say that as two people who reviewed, among others, CAVEMEN and THE PAUL REISER SHOW.
Those two were MASTERPIECE THEATER compared to DEBRIS. The leads may exhibit chemistry -- in a later episode, not this one. What really stood out to us, and we shared this with our NBC friend, was that yet again, when casting a role for a Black woman, they went British. This has been an issue since Gugu Mbatha-Raw was cast as a lead in 2010's UNDERCOVERS. NBC is happy to sprinkle women of color into an ensemble but when it comes to a lead role, they tend to go British and someone might need to address that real soon. ABC has had hour long dramas led by Kerry Washington and Viola Davis, CBS has an hour long drama (ALL RISE) led by Simone Missick and another (THE EQUALIZER) led by Queen Latifah, THE CW has BATWOMAN led by Javicia Leslie but what does NBC have? Or does it just intend to rest on its laurels? To repeatedly state, "Back in 1968, we led the way with JULIA starring Diahann Carroll"?
The network should also address how DEBRIS lousy pilot ever made it to air. Time and again, people are talking into telephones. In an entire season of LAUGH-IN, Lily Tomlin's Ernestine didn't spend that much time on the phone. The leads need to be sporting chemistry to pull viewers in but, instead, everyone's forever on their phone. It's clumsy and distancing -- which really typifies the network as well.