Two Strikes and No Balls

TBS launched a couple new comedies Tuesday. Sort of an odd time, missing both fall and midseason. Does that bode well? Read on for my Pilot Opinion of My Boys.
Lemme get this out of the way: I don’t like sitcoms. At least in the traditional, multicamera, jackassy-family-sitting-on-the-couch-trading- wisecracks kinda way. 22 minutes of rapid-fire punchlines is only somewhat more pleasant than lining up to get punched for 22 minutes.

But I don’t miss The Office, loved Arrested Development, like 30 Rock so far, and am a fairly big fan of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. So is it a single-camera thing? The discomfort comedy trend? Some combination thereof? Should I stop asking questions? Prolly yes to all of the above.

Unfortunately, the new TBS comedy My Boys proves that a single camera isn’t a silver bullet. It is not, despite being billed as such, “veryfunny.” It is, however, mildly ok. Maybe. Cleared The Pilot Hurdle by the narrowest of margins, primarily due to laughing out loud at today’s “Quote of the Night.”

The “My” is P.J. Franklin, a Sun-Times sportswriter who cannot stop acting like a guy or voiceovering everything with strained baseball metaphors. The “Boys” are her Central Casting friends who apparently do little else aside from come to her house to play poker.

The show takes place in Faux Chicago; the kind featuring random shots of Oak Street Beach runners and characters who locale-drop like they’re from Fodor’s. Lots of “what I like about the Billy Goat is” and “the traffic on Lake Shore Drive.” Fortunately no one said “Da Bears,” but I’m sure it’s not far off.

And therein lies the problem with My Boys – the whole thing feels fake. Plot, premise, performance… all of it labors under an air of unreality. The overall conceit is that P.J. is too much “one of the guys” to actually land one. A major plot point in the first two episodes is that the guy she’s into won’t sleep with her… because she’s not protesting enough. Apparently rejection is “hot.”

Complete and utter nonsense. P.J. is, in fact, a guy’s wet dream. A rockstar cute girl who looks great in a softball uni and can not only talk sports, but get you a press pass? Oh, and loves beer? Come on. One might be able to get some mileage out of plots concerning a new guy being put off by her familiarity with other guys, but as it stands, it’s another show that takes place in Bizarro world.

Can it be salvaged? Dunno. Despite the shaky characterization, Jordana Spiro is quite winning as P.J. Her boys need to evolve from a set of stock poker-playing buffoons into actual people – but the actors have decent comic timing. So far the writing’s hit and miss: solid laughs are scattered among obvious jokes, and it’s past time to lose the metaphorical baseball/love narration. We’ve heard it before – and better – in Bull Durham.

And the show’s sort of toothless. Set in a world of sports and guys, it needs to man up and push the comedy a bit. I’ll give it another week, but as the subject said – it’s not looking good.