Tuesday Night Pilots: Raising Hope, Running Wilde, and Detroit 1-8-7

All of tonight’s shows arrived in my living room with high expectations, and though none of them met those expectations, they’re all variations of okay.
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Raising Hope

My Name is Earl and I were good friends. It gave television comedy one of its best characters in Randy Hickey, and often made me laugh. Then NBC axed it to create room for, what, Jay Leno and Outsourced? The buzz for a while was that FOX might pick it up, given that it always was more of a FOX-style sitcom, and while, alas, that didn’t happen, Greg Garcia and FOX did hook up for Raising Hope. I’ve been looking forward to this as a result.

It had far fewer laugh out loud moments than Earl often gave me, and its pacing was a little awkward (evidence either of a show that’s finding its legs, whose legs are pulled in different directions by the creative and economic team behind it, or simply of something that’s not all that good). The lead character, played by Lucas Neff, is likeable, if a little too comfortable with letting those around him provide most of the comedy instead of taking the job upon himself. The supporting cast is good, full of many Earl refugees or bit-part-ers (is that Kenny running the supermarket?), and of course Chloris Leachman. I feel like I’ve seen a bunch of this before, and the payoff from the pilot wasn’t huge, though I was amused at some parts (even if the clips spoiled the best jokes). So for now, I guess I’m just along for the ride because I want it to be good, and because it still could be.

I also need to remind myself that sitcom pilots are rarely good – they just kind of stumble out of the block, rolled up in character types and already-familiar scenarios, and/or trying way too hard to use a scant 22 minutes to set up everything. I’ve rarely fallen for a sitcom at the pilot stage. Or am I just creating excuses for the show already?

The other two shows after the fold…

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Running Wilde

Raising Hope’s partner in crime is quite a lovely tonal partner for it. Both take a suitably FOX-ish approach to social class, going to hyper-stereotyped extremes that are too obviously caricaturized to hold much representational power (I’d hope), but instead drawing lots of humor out of that excess. Raising Hope goes working class, Running Wilde – like Arrested Development before it – goes upper class. So part of me feels that the two need to be watched together.

That said, Running Wilde was only so-so. A similar story for me – penned by Mitch Hurwitz, He of Arrested Development, the show was always going to be of interest to me. Add Will Arnett and a small role from David Cross and I wanted a lot from this one. I worry, though, that what we see is Hurwitz trying to create a show that will stay on the air, rather than just doing his thing. Perhaps Arrested’s hard life taught him several lessons, but I don’t like many of them. The kid is just annoying, and needs way more sarcasm and edge. It’s as though someone airlifted a kid from Growing Pains into the Bluth family. Keri Russell is trying to be funny, but it doesn’t seem to come all that naturally. Which leaves Arnett, the supporting cast, and the script to do all the work. It has Arrested’s pace, which is good. It has its off-the-wall-ness and enjoyable quirkiness, and once again makes me ask incredulously of the writers, as should all good comedy, “who thinks like this?” It’s playful, doesn’t take itself seriously, and is fun. I’ll watch again. But we’re off to a bad start when I think two of the three main characters aren’t interesting, either through acting or writing, and so its days may be numbered on my DVR.

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Detroit 1-8-7

Whoever shackled this series with the promise of being like The Wire was doing the show no favors. To have to live up to My Name is Earl or Arrested Development is one thing, but to have to live up to The Wire is cruel. Detroit 1-8-7 is not The Wire, and although it participates in the attempt to look similar, we should give the thing a chance by freeing it from that requirement.

That said, I enjoyed it. I watch a lot of police procedurals, since they’re often on in my home, but I dislike most of them, or find them background television that rarely inspires in me more than a yawn. I liked this one, however. The pop-ups telling me which case was being worked and introducing me to different characters belittle my intelligence and are lazy devices; there are still a lot of cop clichés; and the dialogue is not as sharp as it could be. But the characters were interesting. I’m really impressed by the diverse cast, and they’re almost all doing good things with their roles. And while I never drank from the Michael Imperioli Kool-Aid prior to watching this, I thought he was excellent here, especially since he’s not overacting (as he and many of the cast of The Sopranos often seemed to be doing). In this one hour, I met more interesting characters than I have met in most of the other premieres combined. The city of Detroit is for now taking a backseat, but it’s only the pilot, and there’s time to do and say more. I’ll be around, at least for a while, to see what happens. And next time I want to tell a co-worker they’re a jerk, I plan to use Imperioli’s technique, calling them while I’m in the room.