"My Boys" was a show that really grew on me last season, yet I never got around to blogging on it, and I didn't have a chance to write a column about the new season due to press tour brain fatigue. Some general thoughts on the series and brief spoilers for the two new episodes coming right up...I will never pretend that "My Boys" is a great comedy, maybe not even a very good one, but I like all the characters and it makes me laugh out loud at least two or three times an episode, which is more than I can say for more respectable comedies like "Weeds" (which I happen to like, but in an ironic detachment way).
The problems are obvious: P.J.'s sports-themed voiceovers are every bit as annoying and obvious as the Carrie Bradshaw columns that inspired them. Even if you allow for the fact that Cubs home games take place in the daytime (freeing her up for all those nighttime poker game), P.J. seems an even less credible sportswriter than Ray Barone. (Though this may be one of those things where it's more glaring to me as a journalist, the way my wife used to yell at the TV during "ER.") Wherever the show is filmed, it doesn't feel like it actually takes place in Chicago. The writers don't really know how to deal with P.J.'s hotness and her boys' attraction to same; Bobby nearly slept with her in the pilot and then it was dropped like it never happened, she and Brendan have now almost gotten together a few times and again it's being ignored, and it's been implied a few times that Kenny has a major crush on her but is too afraid to do anything about it. I'm not saying the writers need to pair her off with any of the guys, but it would be more of an issue than it is, and it's something the show tries to ignore because it would complicate the just-one-of-the-guys premise.
All of that being said, "My Boys" passes the Time Test, in that these characters (as a group, if not individually) are people I would like to hang out with in real life, and whom I enjoy inviting into my living room for an hour a week in the summer. It's a fun show, and at times (especially when Gaffigan's involved) a quite funny show, as demonstrated in both of tonight's episodes.
While the first episode has to spend a chunk of time trying to undo P.J. and Brendan's cliffhanging clinch from last season, there's a bunch of fun scenes, like the guys who got to the poker game early trying to tip off the latecomers about the condition of Kenny's girlfriend, or Mike and Kenny mapping out Bobby's entire celebrity career (complete with stupid theme song), or, especially, P.J.'s on-air, Jame Gumb-quoting meltdown, or the unlikely foursome at the bed store.
So I'll be watching this summer, and blogging at least some of the time, and as I recall from the What Do You Want? thread, at least some of you will be watching with me.
What did everybody else think?
No comments:
Post a Comment