Outsourced - season 1 thread (1 Viewer)

Replacing "Parks and Recreation" temporarily in NBC's Thursday night line-up, but airing in the 9:30 p.m. EDT timeslot is "Outsourced", a comedy about an American sent to India to mange a call-center, and presumably relying on both American and Indian stereotypes for its humor. Will the US audience tune into something that might hit too close to home for their own situations?

I already hate this show with a passion simply for the reason that NBC took their best comedy(Parks and Recreation) off the air to make way for this pile of shit. On top of that, every preview they've shown makes it look like the absolute worst thing put on television in years. I can only hope that it fails miserably in the first couple weeks so they will yank it and put P&R back on the air, even though it never should have been replaced in the first place. You'd think NBC might have learned a thing or two from the Conan-Leno debacle, but it's clear the network is still run by brain-dead apes!

Come on, a show about an american going to India to train them to take over jobs from US workers? Hilarious! And we all know, the economy is so good that everyone rolling in the dough will be laughing like crazy at this (snide laugh, twirls mustache)

Originally Posted by mattCR

Come on, a show about an american going to India to train them to take over jobs from US workers? Hilarious!

Click to expand...

The only good thing about it is that NBC scheduled it for 9:30, so I can simply turn the TV off rather than futz around for 30 min until the last good show comes on. I find the concept of the show so appalling that I'm not even willing to try it.

 

(It takes real ingenuity to offend both American audiences who are, as you noted, being asked to laugh along with the people who have taken their jobs AND the Indians who are digusted by the shallow and stereotypical characterizations.)

Originally Posted by Adam Lenhardt

...AND the Indians who are digusted by the shallow and stereotypical characterizations.)

Click to expand...

Based on commercials, I expected lots of "Thank you, come again!" stereotype Indians but I don't feel that the show really had that. That's not to say that it's a deep look at Indian culture either but I didn't feel that it was offensive. On an ironic note, the Metro PCS commercial with horrific Indian stereotypes played during a commercial break.

 

That being said, the show is terrible. NBC had an excellent two hour block of shows and they made sure to knock it down to an excellent 90 minute block shows. I guess when this inevitably gets cancelled, Parks And Recreation's numbers will have to be better than this garbage.

As someone who once had their job outsourced to India, I found this offensive. Offensively bad. I gave it 15 minutes...wasn't doing it for me.

Originally Posted by ScottH


As someone who once had their job outsourced to India, I found this offensive. Offensively bad. I gave it 15 minutes...wasn't doing it for me.

Click to expand...

I didn't even give it 15 minutes. My job was also outsourced, and I don't need to watch something to remind me of that.

Originally Posted by Steve Tannehill

I didn't even give it 15 minutes. My job was also outsourced, and I don't need to watch something to remind me of that.

Click to expand...

That part of it didn't bother me at all. I was hoping to like it. It was just BAD.

What I don't understand is putting this show in the Thursday night lineup when Parks and Recreation had already filmed 6 episodes for season 3 while they were shooting S2. Amy Poehler was on a talk show saying that they had to squeeze in some filming for the new season when she found out she was pregnant so they did those 6 episodes in the spring. She also mentioned they're going back to work next week so it's obvious the show will still have a home on NBC....I just can't figure out why they tried to make this gigantic turd called Outsourced part of their Thursday night block in the first place. Must be a pet project of one of the morons that has torpedoed the network into last place.

Being in the Software Support /IT field and working for a company that has programmers in India, and the ever looming possibility of having my Job replaced, why would I watch this again.. C'mon NBC what's next a Hillarious Sitcom set during the Katrina Disaster ?

Who calls to place orders anymore?
  I give this show three weeks. No one wants to watch a show about outsourcing in the middle of the worst job market in history since the Depression.  

Just the commercials pissed me off. Being in a company that is a shadow of it's former self because of outsourcing makes for great comedy. Who greenlit this? Maybe their job could be outsourced?

 

Didn't watch and don't want to. Hopefully this will be one of the early casualties, just so I don't even have to see the commercials, they really do incite a feeling of anger.

Originally Posted by joshEH

I give this show three weeks. No one wants to watch a show about outsourcing in the middle of the worst job market in history since the Depression.

Click to expand...

Even if the show had been funny, NBC should have known that most people probably aren't going to look beyond the premise. A show like Hogan's Heroes proves that people might be willing to laugh at shitty things in retrospect but that series wouldn't have happened in the middle of WWII and NBC is crazy for thinking that people were interested in spending 30 minutes laughing at outsourcing while it's happening so much in the real world.

Well, to be fair, many people did laugh at shows like Get Smart during the cold war, and MASH during Vietnam.
 

My thought is if a show is good enough, people will watch.

I agree with Dheiner...if it's funny, I don't care what the premise is. And as I mentioned I was up close and personal with this premise and it didn't bother me at all. The show was just terrible.

Originally Posted by Brent M
What I don't understand is putting this show in the Thursday night lineup when Parks and Recreation had already filmed 6 episodes for season 3 while they were shooting S2. Amy Poehler was on a talk show saying that they had to squeeze in some filming for the new season when she found out she was pregnant so they did those 6 episodes in the spring. She also mentioned they're going back to work next week so it's obvious the show will still have a home on NBC....I just can't figure out why they tried to make this gigantic turd called Outsourced part of their Thursday night block in the first place. Must be a pet project of one of the morons that has torpedoed the network into last place.

Click to expand...

To be fair, NBC did announce last Spring that P&R would be returning mid-season. I actually prefer them holding those six episodes until they can run the entire season over the ABC practice of airing a few episodes then putting the show on hiatus for 3-4 months, then bringing it back in a new time slot on a different night so nobody knows when to watch it.

 

As for Outsourced, I found it to be mildly amusing but seems like a pretty thin premise to hang a series on. It's possible the show could get better as it goes along (both The Office and Parks & Rec got off to shaky starts) but I think they pretty much exhausted all of the culture clash jokes in the pilot, the lead wasn't terribly interesting and none of the supporting characters really stood out. I was glad to see it wasn't another mockumentary like The Office, P&R and Modern Family. I'm willing to give it another week or two to find its footing before passing final judgment but then I'm a bit of a masochist that way.

Originally Posted by ScottH

I agree with Dheiner...if it's funny, I don't care what the premise is.

Click to expand...

I'm in the same boat but I think that's the minority opinion. Just looking at this thread, there seems to be at least 3 people that are bothered by the show based soley on the premise and won't be watching because of it. There's too many viewing options today for a network to make a show with a topic that clearly worries or angers people so much and expect them to watch it.

I'll probably end up giving Outsourced another shot next week, if only because Parks & Rec's opening weeks were similarly shaky (though more solid), and because of the hot Aussie chick.

 

Also, I just remembered the one scene in last night's episode that actually bordered on Arrested Development/Community-level insanity -- the sequence where Todd had his workers "act" out scenes from Hollywood movies, and the mumbly-chick pantomimes holding a Glock, while nervously whispering dialogue from what I sensed was some Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay-type movie. And then bows.

 

And then the show never tells us which movie it was. I fucking lost it.

 

More utterly-off-the-reservation, "WTF??" material like that, and I'll stay with this show for the long haul.

While the pilot didn't have a lot of LOL moments and didn't display much in the way of cleverness/smarts, it was better than, say, 100 Questions, which made my soul shrivel a little. Taking into consideration that it was a pilot, I'll probably give it a few more weeks before shitcanning it. Like Adam said, sticking it at the 9:30 spot makes it much easier to stop watching.

You can probably sum it up best by saying the show has an inherently good premise, but is fundamentally lacking in execution. At least as far as the pilot went. I was hoping this show would be smarter, and aimed at the 30 Rock crowd.

 

The show's depiction of Indian culture (again, so far) was nothing but a undercooked stew of tired stereotypes. I can't believe they made the main character so ignorant, and apparently unprofessional and lecherous.

 

Instead, it all has a "Big Bang Theory" vibe -- a sitcom written by outsiders who don't even understand what they're making fun of.