New CBS sitcoms stay true to old-school style
In the future, if there is one, students at the College of the Matrix or the University of the Deep Underground Bunker may look back toward present-day television the way we now study Greek or Elizabethan drama. You can imagine the theses: “The Role of the Couch in the 20th Century Situation Comedy” or “How Many Doors? Entrance and Exit in the Multi-Camera Sitcom.” Actually, those papers are probably being written somewhere now.
CBS is the great protector, if not yet the sole practitioner, of the multi-camera sitcom, a highly theatrical form that has been with us since the I Love Lucy days. After recently putting a toe into the waters of the more naturalistic, more “modern” single-camera comedy — though those have been around at least since The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet — with flops like We Are Men, The Crazy Ones and Angel From Hell, the network has gone back to what it knows.
This week brings two new oldschool sitcoms to CBS, Man With a Plan starring Matt LeBlanc on Monday and The Great Indoors with Joel McHale on Thursday. (A third, Kevin James’ Kevin Can Wait, has already premièred and received a full-season order, which will tell you something about the limited power of negative reviews.)
Neither is groundbreaking or particularly exciting; both are quite likable and solidly constructed. (James Burrows, the Pilot King, directed the Man pilot; Andy Ackerman, whose own directing career runs back to Burrows’ Cheers, helmed Indoors.) The jokes are good more often than not and rarely embarrassing; the casts seem to enjoy one another’s company, creating plausible communities within clearly artificial frameworks.
Created by That ’70s Show vets Jackie Filgo and Jeff Filgo, Man With a Plan features LeBlanc in what is still for some reason considered the reliably hilarious position of a man taking care of children.
The Great Indoors is built around Joel McHale, who starred in one of television’s most metafictional, formally playful, selfaware sitcoms ever, Dan Harmon’s Community. He presents a not dissimilar character here, the hot/cool early middle-aged dude just old enough to be annoyed by a younger generation — which for that matter was also the character he played hosting The Soup.
McHale plays Jack Gordon, an adventure journalist recalled from the wilds to a desk job when the publication he works for ditches print for the Web. (It doesn’t quite follow, but a premise is a premise.)
The series — created by Mike Gibbons — relies a little too much on generation-gap jokes, made even gappier by Jack’s technological ignorance and aversion to the modern connectosphere.
The mutual mockery is supportive rather than antagonistic — Jack worries about his team, and they worry about him — which makes the show rather sweet.