Just watched three of the new season pilots from ABC that are up on Hulu (The Trophy Wife, The Goldbergs, and Back in the Game).
The good news is, that’s an hour and a half a week of new shows I won’t have to worry about watching ever again.
Now, don’t get me wrong. None of these shows are horrible. But, at best, they’re mediocre. During the three half-hour(ish) shows, there was barely a chuckle raised. Even the likes of George Segal, Bradley Witford, and James Caan couldn’t raise the level of the standard, pandering, and gimmicky writing.
The Trophy Wife
Though it’s over-loaded with characters–the titular trophy wife, her new husband, his two ex-wives, and three kids–those characters are at least vaguely interesting and, even in the cacophony of the pilot, relatively distinctive.
But the tropes run hard and fast. The new wife is almost young enough to be another daughter. One ex-wife is a stern and stoic doctor. The other a flighty, well-dressed, hippy-type with what seems barely a basic grasp of reality. The husband a high powered, yet somehow still inept lawyer. It’s a hard sell to make me believe any of these people were/are married. And all the kids are trying to play one off the others.
The real joy in the show, though, could come from the kids. At least if the writers can really let them be the focus. Pull the two exes into sporadic supporting roles, focus more on the new family unit, and you have enough space to really have a comedy with some heart.
Without doing that, I’m afraid it’s just going to be more noise and glaring as the old wives try to out-do the new one in zaniness.
The Goldbergs
There is no doubt that this show desperately wants to be The Wonder Years for the 80s generation. But, again, instead of something that feels real (like The Wonder Years) we’ve got a show that feels overly crass and lacks charm most of the time.
Even if that was really how Adam Goldberg’s life really was circa 1985, I don’t think a ton of people are going to relate to it… or want to relate to it. At least I hope not.
This show takes dysfunctional families to the next level. And, while it tries to reclaim some measure of heart and familiarity in the final minutes, it lacks the clean flow of even the early seasons of other “regular family” TV families over the years (like Roseanne and even Married With Children).
Again, maybe it’ll find its stride as time goes on, but there’s nothing in the pilot that makes me want to stick around to find out. I’ll just let it stumble around and, if it does end up getting better, I’ll go back and catch it after the season is over. Maybe. (Probably not.)
Back in the Game
By a very narrow margin, this show has the most potential to be kind of good. While the setup is oddly close to a number of other, much better shows–divorced daughter moves in with her father. who was never really there for her growing up–there weren’t a lot of needless “complications” thrown in to make the show “better”. Everything that flows in the show, more or less makes sense and doesn’t feel thrown together.
Perhaps the biggest thing that gives this show a chance is the that, with baseball/softball as a main focus, there’s a distinct framework in which stories can be framed. We’ll get to see the characters develop as the team of misfits they’re coaching pulls together. Should be good for at least one season.
I do hope that they add a little more variety to James Caan’s father/grandfather character, though. What they’ve got him doing in the pilot–gruff, disinterested, drunkard–is really a waste of the man’s talent.
So, yeah… maybe in a year I’ll revisit these on Netflix. But I’m not going to waste five or ten hours of my life on either of them (depending on how long they last) until they’ve run their course and their growing pains are over.
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