Outsourced - season 1 thread (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

Originally Posted by joshEH

You can probably sum it up best by saying the show has an inherently good premise, but is fundamentally lacking in execution.

...if you can call a premise that bothers a significant chunk of your target audience "inherently good".

 

[mattCR]

I think the biggest problem is the heart of the premise. By having a novelty toy company move it's call center to india, and spend a whole episode talking about "fake vomit" etc. they really lost out on some of the potential ways to make this work.
 

I think the core concept is potentially offensive. But it's almost as though they realized that and then backed away. I'm going to tell you if you're going to take a gamble, gamble big. A gag-gift company would never relocate to India because they aren't making enough money or saving enough on a call center. I have clients that small (here in KC) who do run call centers, but almost all their ordering is done on the internet now.. which saves the most money (ie, no employees) and they just let fulfilment staff answer when it rings.

 

No, I tihnk if they wanted to do this as a concept, they should have played it all the way out. This should have been a credit card company that moved it's customer service lines to india or wherever. Because then you could have the audience who hates the employer and feels good about it, and have crazy support dialog about "how to get your miles" etc. Or a technical support company, or whatever.

 

Because the base premise is wrong, the rest of the show leaves the company totally out of the picture, they only exist as a means to quick punchlines.. and the punchlines are quick, and boring, because they are jokes you've heard told a billion times before "oh, yes, the fake vomit makes me sick too" oh! ha ha!

 

Imagine a joke sequence that would have went:


BossA: Ok, so does everyone understand how to explain the cashback policy?

Employee: I don't understand it at all. So, it works in what percentage of the...

BossA: Look, that doesn't matter, just read the script until they give up and hang up. That's all you have to do. Seriously, good times.

 

 

I tihnk there is room on the air for a sitcom where you -hate- the characters. It's been done before. But here, all the characters are milquetoast, and it shows no sign of getting beyond stereotypes and lame jokes. So, that's a hard sell.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I did not watch the pilot, nor do I plan to watch the series; because I find the premise of the show to be incredibly 'tone deaf' to the economic conditions in America and the current jobless rate. There is absolutely nothing humorous about the loss of jobs in this country and the conditions that so many working class families are facing at this time.

 

And yes, I know that is only a television program.

 

- Walter.

 

[Patrick_S]

I hear the NBC is currently working another side splitting comedy called “Foreclosure”. It will feature the whacky adventures of bank executives as they foreclose on a different house each week.

 

I missed the pilot because of a Tivo conflict but I’ll try to watch the next episode even though I do find the premise strange considering how many Americans have lost their jobs to outsourcing.

 

[ScottH]

Originally Posted by Walter Kittel

 

And yes, I know that is only a television program.

And that's all it is. But it's a bad one.

 

[Brent M]

Originally Posted by Patrick_S

I hear the NBC is currently working another side splitting comedy called “Foreclosure”. It will feature the whacky adventures of bank executives as they foreclose on a different house each week.

It will be part of their big comedy block along with "Unemployment" and "Healthcare". Man, NBC just keeps making all the right moves.

 

[Lucia Duran]

Caught this one on demand and what a stinker this turned out to be. Not one funny joke in the whole episode.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

I caught this yesterday on a whim and thought it was OK. There were a few good gags.


I wonder if the storyline about firing someone was a preemptive reaction to negativity about the subject matter.

 

[MishaLauenstein]

Originally Posted by Walter Kittel

I did not watch the pilot, nor do I plan to watch the series; because I find the premise of the show to be incredibly 'tone deaf' to the economic conditions in America and the current jobless rate. There is absolutely nothing humorous about the loss of jobs in this country and the conditions that so many working class families are facing at this time.


And yes, I know that is only a television program.


- Walter.

This is the same problem 24 had. After the attack, no one wanted to watch a show about terrorists. That is why Fox yanked it off the schedule.

 

[Brent M]

Originally Posted by MishaLauenstein




This is the same problem 24 had. After the attack, no one wanted to watch a show about terrorists. That is why Fox yanked it off the schedule.

Weak.

 

[TravisR]

24 was pushed back a couple of weeks but it premiered on November 6, 2001 so it wasn't like they pulled it off the schedule or anything. They did re-edit the pilot to remove one or two shots of the plane exploding but one of those shots looked like crap anyway so it's probably better that they removed it.

 

[Hanson]

The second show was much better than the pilot. I really like the entire cast, and the script, pacing, and performances were much improved. While I'd rather see P&R in this spot, I have to keep in mind that the entire first season of P&R was an unwatchable mess. If there's any show to hold up as an example of a show needing time to find its groove, it's P&R. Outsourced still needs to deliver more on the laughs, but the cold open was a good start, and the observation about the head bobble is on the right track. I can see myself enjoying this until P&R comes back.

 

[joshEH]

Yeah, the second episode was MUCH improved over the pilot outing -- some of the jokes and the pacing still need some work, but on the whole, I felt the potential for a much more solid show just waiting to emerge. It could get there.


And every single line that came out of Asif Basra's mouth in this episode was solid gold (i.e., "sitar lessons")...the dude's comedic timing is killer.

 

[Hanson]

It helped me a lot that they concentrated more on the main cast this time. The pilot was unfocused in that regard.

 

[Patrick Sun]

The head bobbing was sort of funny.

 

[Jonathan Peterson]

The head bobbing was sort of funny.

My wife went to India a few years back to train them. She said many do the head bobble a lot. She also said many talk very quietly, almost whispering, like the one girl does. Living in Fremont where we have one of the largest Indian populations in the US, I have never noticed any of my co-workers do these things. Must be more of a cultural difference there than here.

 

[mattCR]

Gets a full season pickup.

http://www.tvbythenumbers.com/


Wow.

 

[Brent M]

Ugh.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

FWIW, the two episodes of this that I saw were a lot better than the two episodes of Hawaii 5-0 that I saw (but not as good as the three episodes of Detroit 1-8-7).

 

[spshultz]

I finally sat down with Hulu and watched the four episodes. And..........I laughed much more than I thought I would. I'll be DVR'ing this from now on. I'm glad it got picked up for a full season.