CBS' Worst Week

Re: CBS' Worst Week

You know, I was wondering what good excuse the show would have for the lead to wear a plastic diaper, and as it turns out, there really wasn't any. As a matter of fact, there were numerous instances where the characters did things that made no sense other than to make the gags work.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised by the pilot, and out of Worst Week, Mother, and Men, I'd have to say my wife and I laughed the most and the loudest to Worst Week.

I'm not sure if they can keep the density going (you could have fashioned three episodes of any other show from the setup gags they had in the pilot), but if they can jam pack as much stuff in future episodes, I'll keep overlooking the obvious contrivances.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

Not sure if I want to devote much time to watch a walking punching bag, didn't find much of the pilot episode all that funny or clever.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

I didn't really find it funny. I agree that a half hour of watching some poor guy being tortured isn't really entertainment. I can only hope that they tone his bad luck down a bit.

The whole part about him taking the drunk coworker home was just wrong on so many levels. The way the scene ended should mean that he is going to get arrested and get fired because of what the "victim" thought was happening. Nobody would buy his excuse and reasoning for being naked in a drunk girls home.

But they probably won't even mention it again.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

I thought the show was funny and it had me laughing a number of times. The problem was it was slap stick, or stupid funny. It was a bunch of gags not a well written show. If last night was a typical show, it'll wear itself out very quickly.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

I was looking forward to this show, but found it didn't really hold my interest. The guy is such an inept, spineless doofus that I don't feel a bit sorry for him.

The timeslot is also not working for me as the only other CBS Monday comedy I watch is "The Big Bang Theory." I was hoping this would be on at 8:30, but by the time 9:30 rolls around, I'm long gone and into some other show (or football).

Re: CBS' Worst Week

Somewhat-off Week?

Re: CBS' Worst Week

Other than putting the candle down in the wrong place, I don't really recall him venturing into Doofus territory. Everything that happened to him was just normal stuff that happens to everyone during the course of their lives. It's just that it's all happening to him in an extremely short period of time.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

Ben Stiller he is not.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

I am not sure what that means. Is it a question to me?

Re: CBS' Worst Week

What's less than a "worst" week? A Somewhat-off week.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

Oh, ok. Guess that went right over my head.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

Yeah, I've lost track of the number of times I've ended up naked in the apartment of a drunk chick I didn't want to sleep with and ended up improvising a garbage bag loin-cloth and taking a cab to my future in-law's house in the middle of the night. I hate when that happens.

Let's review:

Not blowing off the party and pissing off the woman you've just a) impregnated and b) asked to marry you. (In that order.) Doofus squared.

Talking to drunk chick at party with girlfriend on the phone - dumb. (A smart guy would have hung up, lost the drunk chick, called the girlfriend back and pretended it was a dropped call. He wouldn't have stood there waiting around for the situation to get worse.)

Staying as late at party as he did - dumb.

Getting into the cab with the drunk girl. Dumb. Why even go there? Why even take the risk? Put her in her own cab, hail (or call) another one for yourself. (BTW, what happened to her car and the car she backed into? Did Sir Galahad call a tow truck? Report the accident? Leave her insurance information on the windshieild of the other car?)

Showering at the girl's apartment - incredibly dumb. Also pointless. His clothes were still going to be vomit-stained and his pants and jacket weren't washable. So he was still going to have to go back to his place to change unless he wanted to show up at the future in-laws in a nice vomit-encrusted outfit.

Not even noticing there are no towels in the bathroom - dumb.

The only reason any of this stuff happened in the show is because the plot would have come to a screeching halt if he hadn't. None of them were motivated by character or rooted in plausibility (unless the character is just supposed to be incredibly stupid, in which case one wonders how he even has a job.) No, everything just happened to set up the next joke. It is the comedy version of what Roger Ebert calls "the idiot plot", the one where everyone has to act like an idiot the whole movie would fall apart the first time did something smart like call the cops or not go into the spooky old house alone.

I can't comment further, because right at the point where he entered the parent's house in his plastic diaper I realized I had no interest in or sympathy for any of the characters, least of all the lead, and simply didn't care what happened next or what he said. Oh, I forgot - I did stick around long enough to hear his start his lame-ass lie about going to some guy's apartment. Because there's no chance the drunk girl's story will ever get back to the girlfriend and of course there's not going to be any problem with his alibi friend like the guy going straight from the party to the airport for a trip out of the country or being in the morning paper because he was arrested for DUI.

Didn't laugh once - in part because I'd seen all of the parts that were even mildly amusing 100 times already thanks to the non-stop promos for the show. But mostly because I don't generally find stupid to be funny. I usually give a new show that seems appealing a couple of weeks to find its feet, but now that I've seen half an episode instead of just the snippets in the ads, it is clear that they're going for a style of comedy that just doesn't appeal to me. So I didn't hesitate to stop the recording and blow it off my DVR's hard drive. YMMV.

Regards,

Joe

Re: CBS' Worst Week

Yeah, I've lost count of the number of times I've had to wear an improvised plastic diaper and I pee on a goose 2 or 3 times a week.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

I just can't see this show lasting. Its like a never ending Ben Stiller movie. How many episodes can they keep having bad stuff happen to one guy. The idea works better as a movie. Where out of the blue. One guy has a bunch of bad things happen.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

But this show reminded me why I was not a fan of "Meet the Parents"...

Exactly. Considering all this, credit has to go to the talent of the cast and producers. Despite how much the "idiot plot" annoys me in movies, I stayed mildly interested long enough to watch the whole half hour of "Worst Week."

Re: CBS' Worst Week

I guess great minds really do think alike.

Joe

Re: CBS' Worst Week

Season 2 of the BBC version starts on BBC America on October 19. Looking on The Worst Week of My Life - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia it seems that most of the US pilot was directly taken from part of the first episode of 3-episode The Worst Christmas of My Life which followed two series of 7 episodes each. I think this concept is better suited to a short series. I can't see this holding up for a whole US season.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

Based upon last nights episode, this series is not long for this earth. It was terrible.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

Agreed. I tried to watch it again, and had to change the channel after about 5 minutes. The forced interaction and bizarre attempts at humor with his fiancee's mother were cringe-worthy and not funny at all ("hey, that's my vomit vase, no flowers, vomit only.....now get in the kitchen and fix my breakfast").

Re: CBS' Worst Week

I was channel-surfing and ran across this show. I haven't watched prime time TV in years and was surprised at just how bad it has become.

Thank God for laugh tracks

John

Re: CBS' Worst Week

I ended up watching this a day late, and having read the reactions on this forum, I assumed it would be godawful. I thought about preparing my wife for a letdown before we started watching, but I didn't to gague her unfiltered reaction.

It didn't matter anyway -- we both laughed our asses off.

I can see every flaw that is pointed out by the posters in this thread. But I'm partial to that British style of clockworks plot where everything is in play as a setup to a gag. Yes, it's contrived. Yes, some of the stuff lacks mooring in reality. Yes, you can see a lot of it coming a mile away. But I enjoy the execution.

I guess Worst Week is this year's Cavemen for me -- critically reviled, hated by many, and used as a punchline for bad television. But I like it.



TV, as a whole, is better today than it has been in a long time. It's just that they all can't be Masterpiece Theater, and there are so many channels and so many shows that you could spends days watching the dreck. It's like watching When Things Were Rotten and concluding that TV was terrible in the mid-70's.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

Actually it's the seasons best reviewed new sitcom. I think it just comes down to the differences in peoples humor. Many of the complaints in this thread don't seem to realize that what they perceive as the joke failing, is the joke itself.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

The network idiots took "Rules of Engagement" off for this piece of crap.

Man that pisses me off...

Re: CBS' Worst Week

I guess it does come down to a matter of taste. I found RoE unwatchable. If you want to see Hollywood nepotism in action, check out Oliver Hudson -- there's no way a charisma free actor like this gets a prime time gig and bags someone like Erinn Barlett without BTS connections and string pulling (Erinn, for HIMYM watchers, was Mary the Paralegal).

Re: CBS' Worst Week

It is??? Differing tastes I suppose. All I see these days [save a few decent drama series] are gratuitous "reality" shows, and desperate slapstick sitcoms (like Worst Week).

Now the aforementioned drama series are excellent in quality. Even if I don't always care for the shows, I am usually impressed by the production values. So maybe in a general sense you're correct.

John

Re: CBS' Worst Week

There is a lot of dreck on TV, and that's a given with the amount of channels available. But if you added up the hours of quality TV a week, you'd be hard pressed to watch all of it and keep a full time job. You need a DVR these days just to keep up with a fraction of it. It's easy to point to Wipeout (which, incidentally, I love), and say, "TV sure had gone to shit". But that's ignoring hours and hours of award winning material over dozens of channels. I mean, that's like me pointing to the rack of Harlequin Romances and saying, "books really suck these days".

BTW, the bird moving around in his pocket and being mistaken for tumescence was a "milk shooting out of the nose" moment for me.

Re: CBS' Worst Week

You're right. I have to really like a show to set aside time and watch it on their schedule, thus my general aversion to prime time TV. Even shows like Seinfeld and King of Queens [my current favorite] only hit my screen in syndication.

I had a DVR for a while and did watch more TV then, but that ^&%$* thing was more trouble than it was worth. I don't think I've ever seen a less reliable product. Don't even get me started on Comcast! Great Internet. Lousy TV.

Nowadays I watch a few re-runs as indicated above, and movies, of which I have hundreds. I have OTA [Free] TV and don't miss all of those channels one bit.

John