Thoughts on the new "The Odd Couple" and "Mr. Robinson"

To be honest, I don't watch a ton of TV. Mainly, I wait for a few seasons of a given show to pass, then if enough positive buzz surrounds the show, I find a way to binge-watch it and catch up. To illustrate how behind-the-times I am with TV, I just started watching "The Walking Dead" and "Sons of Anarchy." I did, however, find myself in front of my TV the other night with little to do and not much on (it's a slow time for sports, especially when your favorite baseball team has been dead in the water for months already), and watched the new incarnation of "The Odd Couple" with Matthew Perry and Thomas Lennon, plus the new show "Mr. Robinson" with the always-likable Craig Robinson.

I'm not going to do a detailed breakdown of each, because I wouldn't be a good judge of casting, acting, and those things that make up a television show. I pay attention to the writing, but that's about as close to being a TV "critic" as I get. For "The Odd Couple" and "Mr. Robinson," the writing seemed fine, especially considering how young these shows are in their development. The one thing that did strike me, though, was how both of these shows seemed outdated, which should never be the case with a brand new series.

Maybe it's because I've grown to despise the use of a laugh track, or maybe it's because I'm ignorant to most new shows, but I couldn't help thinking that "The Odd Couple" and "Mr. Robinson" just kept sinking further into the ocean of forgettable shows the more I watched. I really like all the main characters involved in each of the shows. Matthew Perry has good comedic sense and timing, I've been a fan of Tom Lennon's since "The State," and Craig Robinson has carved out a niche for himself that makes him as close to a singular talent as possible (his musical talent doesn't hurt this case at all, either).

Anyway, a good comedy show contains some semblance of a rhythm to it ... the jokes hit on beats. It might not be a uniform rhythm like in music, but it's hidden in the writing somewhere. That's what hit me the wrong way. It's entirely possible the the old-school networks are to blame, but watching these shows felt like Taylor Swift taking a composition by Beethoven, erasing most of the notes but leaving every fourth note (the "joke" notes), and trying to re-write the rest of the song around the skeleton of the Beethoven piece, in an attempt to make it her own. Which is to say: "The Odd Couple" and "Mr. Robinson" seemed to me to be written too much to structure that it was detrimental to each of them. Instead of finding their own rhythm, they took the standard good-but-not-great, white bread skeleton of a tried-and-true comedy show, erased the content, re-made it to make it somewhat their own, but still tried to hit all the same joke notes that have been hit a million times before. It's like in football, the common logic of yesteryear was that any good team had to run the ball and stop the run. That type of low risk/low reward style of play is a recipe for mediocrity in today's pass-happy game. It's time for network television to air it out a little instead of keeping their new shows on the ground.  

Note From Author

As you can see, the great majority of content here deals with sports. As the author of this page, I now write for LastWordOnSports.com, which obviously gets precedent over this little thing. If you would like more sports from me, head over to LWOS. However, my post about the State Farm commercial continues to get clicks, so I will continue to post here about non-sports stuff -- probably music, TV, and more take-downs of dumb commercials. Thanks for checking this here blog out.

-Ryan Timmerman (@TheDudeMan3)

Why All Sports Arguments Come Down To Reasons and Excuses (And Why I Hate It)

Even though I love sports, I oftentimes get annoyed by sports fans.  To me, most just seem too emotional and irrational - if not hypocritical - for my liking.  The mental gymnastics that sports fans go through in order to defend their own guys, but then either turn their back on guys when they leave the team, or justify the actions of players on one's favorite team while criticizing another player's similar actions  on a different teams makes me go crazy.  Recently, I realized this all boils down to how sports fans disseminate between two words: reasons and excuses.

See, when someone's favorite team wins, the fan base  looks for reasons their team won, or excuses why they lost.  We're largely dealing with the exact same thing, only arguing over the semantics of it.  I guess that's just the way the world works these days, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.  What makes sports different, however, is that we keep score.  In other instances, people could argue over whether the protesters in Ferguson, Missouri are a symbol for the progress we still need to make toward racial equality, or if they're "rioting" for riot's sake.  These arguments can go for hours, days, weeks, years.  In sports, the side who's ahead on the scoreboard when triple zeros appear on the clock ultimately will win the argument with the guy in the bar stool next to them who's rooting for the losing side.  This might occasionally unfair; perhaps it might be unfair more often than occasionally.  Either way, it is the argument-ender.

Moreover, reasons and excuses can sort of have alternate meanings.  People who are in the "Baseball players who used PEDs should be banned from the Hall of Fame" camp use PED use as the reason why those players achieved such a high level of success, and use that reasoning to diminish their accomplishment.  Defenders of those players see those "reasons" as excuses not to vote for the best players of their generation.  Again, it's the same subject matter, same players, but interpreted subjectively on each side of the sports-viewing pendulum.  The most common area where something like this happens are in movies and television.  People can watch the same movie but come away with very different interpretations.  These interpretations, however, are probably more objective views than in other areas.  As with the Ferguson protesters, they way they're viewed most likely aligns with one's political views.  This is similar to sports, where one's favorite team clouds their objectivity and we end up with a great deal of confirmation bias - where people's mind's are made up beforehand, then fit their rationale around the position they were going to have all along.  But again, in sports we keep score, there are no open-ended endings.

I suppose sports wouldn't be as much fun if everyone was fair-minded, but I guess I'm just not wired like most sports fans.  If nothing else, I strive to be consistent in my views, and that often comes at the cost of being the best fan I could be.  I don't mean to take a holier-than-thou tone, in fact I'm often jealous of friends who take sports so seriously.  I'd love to be throw-the-remote-at-the-TV guy, but I just can't; I can't because to me it seems inconsistent with broader views. Or at least that's my reason why I don't get as worked up about sports as I used to ... or maybe that's just my excuse.

 

#DumbMarketing: Is State Farm Offering Divorce/Leave Your Kids Insurance?

Here's the commercial in question (although you've probably seen it already):

Now, before the final sequence here are the "never" moments that occur:

1) "I'm never getting married ... guaranteed."
2) "We're never having kids."
3) "We're never moving to the suburbs."
4) "We are never getting [a mini-van]."
5) "We are never having another kid."

And finally,

5) "I'm never letting go."

The ending seems sweet enough, if not a downright touching moment. But think about it: what evidence do we have that this guy really means he's "never letting go"? None. Not only that, all the evidence points to the contrary. 

With the sample we're given, it's actually safer to bet on him leaving his wife and kids than actually staying with them, because, ya know, the whole commercial is built on the guy reneging on things he said he'd never do.

Furthermore, once you think about it in terms of this guy leaving his wife and kids,(or at least entertain the possibility), doesn't it make the ending really bizarre? After the final "I'm never letting go," the State Farm ad proclaims it's there "For all the nevers in life." Really, ALL the nevers? Wouldn't it have been better to sort of get ahead of the assumption that -- as far as this commercial goes -- "never" never means "never"?

I mean, they could have gone with something like "Sometimes never means 'never' ... for all the other nevers, there's State Farm." Nope. They went with ALL the nevers. Then, the State Farm logo/words are underscored with "Auto" (presumably referring to the mini-van), "Home" (self-explanatory), "Life" (more in a second), and "Bank" (referring to the family's and/or the guy's money/savings).

 So, this "Life" thing. I think it's safe to say the "Life" category can't really be boiled down to one simple thing like the other areas of auto, home, and bank. 

Life is more complex and all-encompassing. Since it's an insurance ad, one of those aspects of "Life" would undoubtedly be life insurance -- as in, money left for the guy's family should something horrible and unexpected happen. But maybe we could also combine the "Life" and "Bank" areas to offer something in the way of a separate account should the guy find himself without his wife and kids.

Admittedly, that's sort of a conspiracy theory, but the divorce rate is about 50/50, so it's not like assuming a divorce is in the works is assuming the thing that happens 1% of the time will happen.  We're betting even odds here.  

But before you make me the bad guy for suggesting a bad ending, remember, State Farm is there for ALL the nevers.