By Chris Ryall
May 27, 2004
Well, we can't all be FRASIER, can we? Of course, that doesn't mean we have to be LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY after they move to L.A., does it, makers of JOEY?
Evidently it does. I'd intended to come out and be nicer to many of the pilots for the 2004-05 season. I felt like I was pretty negative about a lot of shows last season, only really liking ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (nicely done, Fox, bringing that back) and KAREN SISCO (nicely manged, ABC, once again). So I thought I'd try harder to see what these new shows have to offer and not just find their faults. Even the bad shows must do some things well, right? (Ohhhh, no...just you wait until I get to Michael Biehn's HAWAII. And NBC's THE MEN'S ROOM. And...
Anyway, my resolve to be kinder to these shows lasted...oh, up until I saw one. Then I was reminded again that these shows, many of the shows on TV, are just bad. Bad to the point that they don't deserve a pass for just being typical sitcoms. Since when did mediocrity become okay just because it's the norm? I think that what shows like ARRESTED and before it, FREAKS AND GEEKS and CHEERS and SPORTS NIGHT and whatever other quality shows, have shown is that TV shows don't have to follow the inane conventions that most seem to follow. FRIENDS didn't have to suck the last two or three seasons (well, maybe it did--the shelf life of a once-decent show is an entirely different conversation). And JOEY doesn't have to be as lame as it is. If quality or enjoyability were any indication of a show's longevity, this show wouldn't make it to November Sweeps. But since it's a FRIENDS spin-off and since Matt LeBlanc is being paid a ton of money to continue playing a character that needs no continuing, and because this show will air in the revenue-heavy Thursday-at-8 spot, well, I imagine it'll be around for a while.
 |
This could all be part of an insidious plan by NBC. After all, this season, they've gone very reality show heavy, despite the fact that most people admit that reality shows suck (even while they watch them every week). NBC could be stacking the deck with crappy new sitcoms to make us actually long for more FEAR FACTOR and less JOEY. Or maybe it's just the fact that the Joey character only works as a lesser part of six people and not as a show's lead.
FRASIER wisely gave the Frasier Crane character some interesting people to play off, making it less important for him to carry every show. JOEY has given us...Drea DeMatteo as Joey's sister, her 20-year-old son and a braless neighbor. All of whom stay in the background while Joey makes us long for Chandler or Ross to stop by.
The hook is that Joey moves to LA to pursue an acting career. He meets up with his sister Gina, she with the new fake boobs and the too-smart son. Now, DeMatteo is great on THE SOPRANOS, although her presence here makes me think that David Chase will have her whacked just for participating in this and not for turning informant on his show.
The thing that stood out to me most about this show were the press notes that stated "Emmy nominee Matt LeBlanc reprises his Friends role..." This guy was an EMMY NOMINEE? I guess I blacked that memory out. Maybe he's a good actor saddled with bad lines but...man, are they bad lines. The jokes are stale, the situations uber-forced (DeMatteo's kid, who ends up moving in with Joey is, get this twist, so smart that he sometimes forgets to eat! Remember, Joey is the guy who's so into food that sometimes he forgets to eat! So they're, like, opposites! Genius.) and the L.A. scenery is like a set on an Ed Wood movie. Granted, FRIENDS didn't exactly feel like New York but this set suddenly makes that show feel like a Spike Lee joint.
 |
Joey has a new agent, Jennifer Coolidge (whatever happened to her sitcom?), and Ashley Scott looks like the girl from Steve Perry's "Oh, Sherry" video, clad in braless tank-tops as she walks by with no purpose other than to start a frustration/flirtation with Joey. See, she's married and...oh, who cares? At one point, Joey actually gets "serious" and actorly and tries to convince his sister to allow her son to move in with him. He gets a monlogue talking all about change, how his friends in New York changed and he had to embrace change and change is good and I should really change the channel. Dumb jokes for 21 minutes and then one minute of "depth" does not a lead character make.
Now, I like LeBlanc, and at times on the last few sucky years of FRIENDS, he and Jen Aniston were the only bearable parts of that show. But on this, he's just not a lead character, and yet he's thus far given no one interesting to play off. For some reason, DeMatteo looks like a cross-dresser and has nothing interesting to say, her son is too smart for his own good and has nothing interesting to say, and his neighbor in that fake, fake apartment building has no bras and nothing interesting to say.
It's like this: if you liked the FRIENDS finale, you'll probably like this show. I'm just not in that particular group.
The good news is, fans of THE O.C. who were perturbed that that show is moving opposite this one have nothing to worry about...
NBC's JOEY airs this Fall on Thursday nights at 8:00 PM.
E-MAIL CHRIS RYALL | ARCHIVES
