By Chris Ryall
June 17, 2004
To anyone who watched the show last night, I apologize for not getting this to you sooner. If I didn't want to spread the word about METHOD AND RED last week (it also debuted yesterday), I would have warned you ahead of time. QUINTUPLETS is suck times five.
Andy Richter, what happened to you? When did you give up? Andy Richter is funny, man. He was funny on Conan, he was funny hosting this Comedy Central Awards Show and he was really funny on the too-quickly cancelled ANDY RICHTER CONTROLS THE UNIVERSE. But here...here in QUINTUPLETS, the sitcom about five fraternal twins that I doubt will last five episodes, he's just bad. In that, he and his show have something in common.
The sitcom-ready premise is this: Andy and his wife, Rebecca Creskoff (survivor of the equally bad GREETINGS FROM TUCSON), have five fifteen-year-old children. Mom pooped out one after another fifteen years ago, and she was good enough to make sure that not one looked like he or she could possibly be related to any of the others. But these kids are a hack sitcom writer's dream, each filling a basic personality type. I won't burden you with their names, but of the three boys, one is a lady's man, one is a geek and one is a girl-crazy runt virgin. Of the two sisters, one is a hot airhead and the other is an anti-social Janeane Garafolo-type. When these five opposite types (don't ask me how you can have five opposites; that statement still makes more sense than this show) get together, well, the hilarity must ensue, right? Uh...nope.
Andy and his wife are put-upon, over-worked, tired, never given any free time, shlubby, whiny bores. So Andy decides to get them their night out and gets Springsteen tickets (what year is this show, 1987?) for he and his wife. The constantly battling siblings decide to throw a party that night. While the parents are away, the runy kid almost hooks up (he faints after seeing breasts), the stufly kid has to kick out the school hottie after she insults his brothers, the anti-social chick hooks up with an anti-social dude...all basic sitcomy stuff. The sad part about all this is that Andy is pushed in the background for five generic kids to take center stage, as though Fox believes for one second that teenagers would watch this tripe.
Andy eats a "brownie" at the show and then acts stoned, well, kind of drunk, then angry, then sitcom-serious, and any number of other moods that don't ring true in any way. Is this the state of family sitcoms? Do they have to be so awful, so soul-suckingly lame and false all the way through? I really hope not. This is the kind of thing I expect to see ABC air as part of their Friday night "TGIF" line-up. It's bad enough to make me wish GREETINGS FROM TUCSON was still on. And it's the kind of show that should prompt Conan O'Brien to set up an intervention for his once-funny sidekick.
Fox's QUINTUPLETS debuted yesterday, June 16, at 8:30 PM.
Next Week: NBC's HAWAII
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