The official party line on this one is: not enough heart. It may sound strange to start my stick-it-to-the-critics blog this way, but I have to agree. The main characters are all off-putting. Their brief moments of clarity were surely focus-grouped in by nervous producers. And that shows, like a wad Play-Doh on a marble sculpture. Not that the show is anything so classy as a marble sculpture, but I'm sure this was deliberate.
So is there anything going for it? Definitely. The animation is cool. The lines are slick, the colors faded, the interiors hip. The shots are never static and are frequently dramatic. Jonah Hill's name brought money to the project that is really making the visuals attractive.
What else? Let's see... The character of Jeremy is working it as eye candy in a way that's making me uncomfortable around cartoons generally. And Allen Gregory is one of the most original characters on television in the last few years, one of the most quirky and bizarre, who presents moments for some pretty sophisticated jokes. And then that deliberate thing again. Watching it is like a challenge. Are you willing to take comedy like medicine, to take laughs that are smart but only punctuate long moments of discomfort? the creators seem to be saying.
My answer was just, no. Sure, many jokes are funny. Some situations are laughably absurd. I'm especially into the main character's crush on his 70-something school principal. But the characters are too unlikeable for me. Not scamps like Dennis the Menace (although personally I can't stand him either). Just unpleasant to watch. Even your generic diarrhea episode of South Park, I feel, has Stan in the background as the voice of reason, but there's nothing like that here. This left me feeling dirtier.
But then there's that "deliberate" thing again, still needling at me. People aren't seeing that Allen Gregory is meant to be as unpleasant as it is, and, if you have a high tolerance for upper-class sociopath, you might well love this show. I think the amoral characters are a cool risk, and, for the reason that shows can be deliberately uncomfortable rather than incidentally, I also people need to back off shows that portray characters with attitudes the viewers would not espouse, especially comedy shows that are portraying these attitudes to mock them. When Peter says something homophobic on Family Guy, it's because he's an idiot who drinks too much and can't read. We should trust that Seth MacFarlane isn't making bigotry look viable when he puts it in Griffin's mouth. Allen Gregory is, as I said, one of the most original characters on TV, and people shouldn't be getting offended that he's a classist, racist, pretentious, self-entitled little prick. Laughing at those attitudes is where the humor comes in. No one is suggesting your child act like this. The creators are just reminding you that these people exist and that they're funnier than your average whatever-the-main-character-does-on-King-of-Queens.
Final judgment, though, deliberateness aside: I'll be fine with this going off the air in a few more episodes and a just few thousand DVDs being sold to hardcore fans.
So is there anything going for it? Definitely. The animation is cool. The lines are slick, the colors faded, the interiors hip. The shots are never static and are frequently dramatic. Jonah Hill's name brought money to the project that is really making the visuals attractive.
What else? Let's see... The character of Jeremy is working it as eye candy in a way that's making me uncomfortable around cartoons generally. And Allen Gregory is one of the most original characters on television in the last few years, one of the most quirky and bizarre, who presents moments for some pretty sophisticated jokes. And then that deliberate thing again. Watching it is like a challenge. Are you willing to take comedy like medicine, to take laughs that are smart but only punctuate long moments of discomfort? the creators seem to be saying.
My answer was just, no. Sure, many jokes are funny. Some situations are laughably absurd. I'm especially into the main character's crush on his 70-something school principal. But the characters are too unlikeable for me. Not scamps like Dennis the Menace (although personally I can't stand him either). Just unpleasant to watch. Even your generic diarrhea episode of South Park, I feel, has Stan in the background as the voice of reason, but there's nothing like that here. This left me feeling dirtier.
But then there's that "deliberate" thing again, still needling at me. People aren't seeing that Allen Gregory is meant to be as unpleasant as it is, and, if you have a high tolerance for upper-class sociopath, you might well love this show. I think the amoral characters are a cool risk, and, for the reason that shows can be deliberately uncomfortable rather than incidentally, I also people need to back off shows that portray characters with attitudes the viewers would not espouse, especially comedy shows that are portraying these attitudes to mock them. When Peter says something homophobic on Family Guy, it's because he's an idiot who drinks too much and can't read. We should trust that Seth MacFarlane isn't making bigotry look viable when he puts it in Griffin's mouth. Allen Gregory is, as I said, one of the most original characters on TV, and people shouldn't be getting offended that he's a classist, racist, pretentious, self-entitled little prick. Laughing at those attitudes is where the humor comes in. No one is suggesting your child act like this. The creators are just reminding you that these people exist and that they're funnier than your average whatever-the-main-character-does-on-King-of-Queens.
Final judgment, though, deliberateness aside: I'll be fine with this going off the air in a few more episodes and a just few thousand DVDs being sold to hardcore fans.
