310 replies to this topic

[Merve]

I didn't find a thread for this sitcom, which premiered tonight.

I liked the vibe, even if wasn't laugh-out-loud funny. In fact, I find the show kind of interesting. Also, Bret Harrison and Christian Slater were awesome. What did everyone else think?

[lorenzothekind]

Not sure I would have thought to call this a comedy if it wasn't in this thread, but my love for Reaper Sam and his new Devil (Christian Slater as, say, Ray Wise's wiseass nephew works for me) will keep me watching for a few eps.. but the rest of the cast are still more walking (annoying) concepts than characters ... The basic idea could be fun so maybe with a little luck maybe we'll be saying, well the pilot sucked but....

But for now.... the pilot pretty much sucked.

[ElleEstTrois]

I loved the pilot, but I'm easy to please.

I'll allow it...but only with more Michael Rosenbaum.

Excellent comedic timing from all involved. From Alphonso McAuley "Obama!" LOL Still get a chuckle out of that one.

I do, however, wish Bret's and Christian's previous series (Reaper and My Own Worst Enemy respectively) had lived on.

[stardust462]

I don't know it was kind of ... mediocre to me. The main five characters have some chemistry already. That boyfriend character was the highlight, can't wait to see what they do with him. There were some really funny moments, like the scene where the girl brings in the motorcycle.

I think a lot of the episode was spent putting everything in place, which is expected from a pilot, so hopefully it keeps growing from that. I think it has the potential to do so. I'm going to keep watching and see how it goes.

[sandyjoys]

My husband and I actually laughed out loud a few times within the first 10 minutes. That is a big thing for me, because I usually hate pilots. I will def check it out again.

[marketdoctor]

I liked it enough to hope they address at some point that Oz looks just like the Communications Officer from the Excelsior in Star Trek VI. Christian Slater is in a great role for his talent, as is Trevor Moore as a master of disguise. The whole cast is nicely done, though.

I thought it was more "fun to watch" than "sitcommy". And I respect any sitcom a little more if it doesn't have a laugh track.

This is pure speculation, but I think the Goober was a fake-out (it'd be easy to have a map with your office blipping. It's a good prank, though, especially if you've already hacked someone's Facebook so you can claim to know where they've been.)

[murrrrr]

That frat house looked a lot like the KT house from Greek. Maybe it was just that fact that they are both beat up looking.

I kept expecting Christian Slater to say, "I'm the Devil!".

[GenieinTX]

I liked it. It made me smile. Of course I love BH and CS both. I thought the prank on the new kid guy was a little annoying at times, and thought it was a bit too soon to have BH pining over the girl, but overall it made me happy. I'm in.

[lgrant2001]

I thought it had potential; there were some funny bits and none of the characters irritated me. Much. I think in real life the Cake Lady might have gotten slapped in the face a little bit. However, I did think the pilot episode could have been better. It felt like they tried to squeeze an hour show into 30 minutes running time. Not in a good way. I think if they focused more on integrating Cameron to the team, the pranks, getting to know you stuff and maybe a side caper it would have worked better for me. Making him Team Lead I thought was kind of overstuffing the bird. Or if the pilot was 60 minutes instead of 30 it wouldn't have felt so crammed in.

Also I hope they show us that Oz has some special skill of his own other than finding the talent. Otherwise, why does he even need to be there? I'd imagine a team like this, with their skills and intelligence, would quickly go out on their own if their boss was just some wrangler that takes a cut of their profits without contributing in any kind of meaningful way. Unless the Captain Kirk chair is enough of a contribution.

[mtlchickie]

Dear Christian Slater: after 20 some odd years...I still would.

Overall I did enjoy it which says a lot considering how meh the freshman class has been for this TV season. I do agree they were stuffing a lot into a pilot and I do hope that "Boom goes the dynamite" is used in small doses but it's something I would still watch. The "O-Bama" had me rolling for 10 minutes. Only weird thing was to see Lex Luthor with so much hair!

[jbreckenridge]

Michael Rosenbaum makes a surprising good Dane Cook.

[ganesh]

Gah. I forgot this was on! Sounds like the pilot is a typical one: trying to do too much to get the viewer introduced to all the characters. Glad to hear BH did well. I've liked his work since The Loop. I'll have to track this down tomorrow and check back in after I watch it.

[RooKanga]

I usually hate pilots

Me too. I'll give it another try next week, though

[dougfir]

I hope this sticks around; Christian Slater and Bret Harrison seem like they'd make a good team. I agree the main problem was that too much was crammed into a half-hour pilot..... might've been better to end the ep where it was revealed they broke into the wrong car dealership and resolve that issue the following week.

And as long as it doesn't take over the whole series, I wouldn't mind seeing an ongoing prank war between BH's character and the Trekkie.

[EmptyHanded85]

I try to give all pilots a shot, so I did the same for this show. I gave up immediately after this exchange:

“I don’t have time. I got three dates tonight”
“How is that even possible?”
“Don’t call me. I’ll be multi-assing.”

Multi-assing. Wow.

I don't think I have ever rolled my eyes so hard.

[Bollen04]

Only weird thing was to see Lex Luthor with so much hair!

OMG!!! I had no idea that was him. I knew he looked familar. I didn't pay attention to the opening credits.

Giving this show a chance b/c I am a HUGE Christian Slater fan. Still pissed over the cancelation of My Own Worst Enemy!!! It was a good episode but it wasnt awesome. I, too very rarely like a pilot episode. I do believe with a little tweeking, it is going to be a keeper.

[lgrant2001]

I try to give all pilots a shot, so I did the same for this show. I gave up immediately after this exchange:
“I don’t have time. I got three dates tonight”
“How is that even possible?”
“Don’t call me. I’ll be multi-assing.”
Multi-assing. Wow.
I don't think I have ever rolled my eyes so hard.

O-ho then! So, mission accomplished! Because the whole point of that inane conversation was to serve as a distraction so Cameron wouldn't notice he was getting fucked over by having the wrong dealer name subtly implanted into his newbie brain. Yeah I hated "multi-assing" too, but unlike you I was too lazy to lean all the way over to the other side of the couch for my remote, so I was actually still tuned in when the payoff finallly came.

[kathyk2]

I love both Bret Harrison and Christian Slater so I enjoyed this. Thank goodness it isn't another romantic comedy. The scene where Cameron met OZ reminded me of the scene where Sam met the Devil on Reaper. I hope in the future we get more focus on the jobs rather than office politics. Seeing Cameron get pranked got old after a while. Making Cameron the team leader made sense Oz wanted to see how he reacted under pressure.

[Durq]

I watched for Michael Rosenbaum but enjoyed the rest of the cast as well. The script was a little laboured but with the premise established, hopefully they can leap right into the action next week.

[Bec]

I thought the purpose of "multi-assing" was mostly to establish that that guy's an ass. But true, it could also serve as distraction to make everyone less aware that Cameron is being brainwashed. Hee. The Mayfair/Mayfield thing was pretty well done. I didn't even know anything was up until they told us what's going on. That doesn't happen often when I watch TV.

The scene where Cameron met OZ reminded me of the scene where Sam met the Devil on Reaper.

I know! Even BH's little surprised scream was exactly the same. I loved Reaper, so I'll take it as a bit of a homage instead of a rip-off. But they better be careful how much they take from Reaper (and The Loop for that matter), since that show got cancelled and all. This show is like what would happen if Reaper and The Loop got smashed together.

I hope there'll be more action and more danger in the later cases. Stealing both of those cars seemed way too easy the way it was presented to us on screen, even though I'm guessing it's supposed to seem hard. I realize they can only do so much in one half-hour while trying to cram in tons of exposition at the same time, so I give the lack of real action a pass this week. But there is no excuse for the overuse of annoying catchphrases like "Boom goes the dynamite". OMG STFU. Those were such a waste of time.

A lot of comedy builds on repetition, but this pilot was just repetition after repetition all in the span of half an hour. Too much. They need to cut way back on the overuse of this comedic device.

Despite the mediocre opening, the potential for greatness is there, so here's to a good long life for this show. I mean, I liked the crazy little touches like that cute little house made of matchbooks. That's not ripped from anywhere else as far as I know. If it's not, then it shows that somewhere under all the stuff copied and pasted from other shows, these writers have some ideas of their own. If they tone down the stuff taken from other places (copying can be okay, but don't overdo it) and put more of their own ideas into this, this can be great.

[TV Anonymous]

I am sorry, but I do not think that this third time will be a charm for Christian Slater.

[Del31]

I just wish that Trevor Moore (Josh?) would let up on the Dwight Shrute imitation. The intensity, the gun show, the stories-going-too-far-just-to-impress. It got to the point that I had to look away whenever he was onscreen.

[Stalkmylife82]

Above all else, the multi-assing line establishes that this characters indeed a tool. It wasn't meant to make the audience laugh, in my opinion.

At this point, I don't bother over-analyzing pilots. The showrunners have to cover alot of ground in a short amount of time. So I don't bash them for cramming in too much anymore. It kind of has to be done. Lay all of their cards out there so the audience knows what type of show their watching.

The only part that bothered me was this show establishing another "lead character pines for love interest story" shoehorned in. I was kind of happy to see her reaching out to him in a friendly way and I liked that vibe. Then, he started to ask her out and yelled "f*uck" out loud. It's overdone and it's also putting your characters in a box having two characters that are pretty much "destined" to hook up. Do the show and see how chemistry comes together. Pair people up based on that instead establishing these storylines where we have to deal with a character pining for someone they can't have and waiting for the breakup of the man/woman to happen so the couple can just get together already.

Obama! Made me cough amost choke on the juice I was drinking.

I hope there'll be more action and more danger in the later cases. Stealing both of those cars seemed way too easy the way it was presented to us on screen, even though I'm guessing it's supposed to seem hard.

I don't agree with this. The second theft, in my opinion, was easy for comic effect. They thought up this elaborte plane the first time around but the second was extremely simple in execution. The first theft was difficult. There was a lot they had to do. I think the problem is that the length of the show makes things like the first theft look easy. For all the steps they took, we only saw like 2-3 minutes of pay off. The show being 21 minutes (after commercials) I think will hurt it because the concept calls for elaborte plans and set pieces but the running time isn't going to allow that too much. Without a extra 20 something minutes, either the capers of the characters will end up suffering.

Edited by Stalkmylife82, Apr 8, 2011 @ 12:19 PM.

[arc]

Call me small-minded, but I find it difficult to believe in a nerd who apparently likes Star Wars and Star Trek equally. (Side note: there are shows who have geek writers - Futurama, 30 Rock, Community - and shows with geek characters but whose writers don't really seem to be of geekdom, and so far this show feels like the latter.

I totally did not recognize Michael Rosenbaum at all.

And as for the show, I liked how the AV Club wrote it up:

Breaking In is just the latest example of a new genre of single-camera shows that may as well be called the "wacky shit happens, and it's funny because it's CRAZY?!" genre. [...] Breaking In, in fact, almost seems like it would work if it were an hour-long dramedy on USA or something, instead of the half-hour comedy we've gotten. There's too much plot for a half-hour, and it tends to drown out the laughs. But the laughs are so anemic that you wish the show would just get on with the plot already.

"Boom goes the dynamite" was an example of some lazy-ass joke writing -- you'd think with a pilot that they would have spitballed around a few more catchphrases and found something better.

[janet a]

Recognized no one on it but CS; I thought the "multi-assing" guy was good only when he was being someone other than himself. (Maybe that was the point...) But entertaining enough. :) I'll keep timeshifting it for a while. (Gotta watch my Criminal Minds live, after all...)

[ganesh]

Sure, there's a lot crammed in, as typical with a pilot, but there's enough here to make me want to watch more. I certainly like a lot of wordy dialogue, but it takes skill to pull it off. I think they did a pretty good job overall. I liked the pacing.

BH was in his usual form (and that's good). I still say he's got some of the best timing out of anyone. I hope the show focuses on the interaction between him and CS. I thought they played off really well. I think he does best when he plays the straight man. I think the show really plays to BH's strengths.

"king pimp." Nice. CS looks like he his having a blast.

I don't know if the cast had one person too many. I suppose it makes sense if they have to pull off these elaborate jobs.

I'm not a fan of "main character is into girl in first episode." It's not necessary. Just let the show roll.

Above all else, the multi-assing line establishes that this characters indeed a tool. It wasn't meant to make the audience laugh, in my opinion.

He came off to me like a dick that likes to fuck with people just because he can. Which is fine with me. There's dicks in everyone's workplace.

I also liked how in the end the security from the car dealership sucked so bad that throwing a brick through the window was effective to steal the car.

Recognized no one on it but CS...

BH was in the criminally underrated but very good Reaper. His back and forth with Ray Wise is similar to that with CS here. It's something he does well. He was also on The Loop, which was all over the place, but his interactions with Mimi Rogers and Philip Baker Hall were as good as anything. If you've got time on your hands and looking for something to watch.

[lauralius]

That frat house looked a lot like the KT house from Greek. Maybe it was just that fact that they are both beat up looking.

It was actually the same house, same pillars, windows, trees (which is odd because I thought the set was destroyed). And yes, I'm the nerd who compared screencaps.

I liked this. It has sort of a Leverage vibe, but more on the comedy side. I think CS is best when challenging J.D. like this, walking the line between brilliance and batshit insanity.

[sadangel]

I only watched to support Michael (an exchange for him doing Lex one more time). It was okay. I did like Christian and the Reaper guy. Hopefully it'll get better.

[Ethereal Zoe]

It has sort of a Leverage vibe, but more on the comedy side.

Oh, I think it had more than a vibe. I think someone sat down and said, "Let's make Leverage, but funny and with Jack Nicholson." And then they came up with this.

So at least they got the Leverage and the Jack Nicholson parts right.

[Bunkster]

Okay, so I didn't watch this. Actually, I'd never even heard of it. But my parents watched it and loved a song that played. The only information they could give me was the lyric "Something in common". Does anyone know the song? Or even just a couple more lyrics? I couldn't find anything via google.