'100 Questions,'
not worth answering
This is the latest 'Friends'-themed sitcom
By Tom Conroy
May 25, 2010
Timing is everything. If NBC’s new sitcom “100 Questions” weren’t premiering so soon after ABC’s “Romantically Challenged,” it wouldn’t be so painfully obvious the viewing public isn’t clamoring for the next “Friends.”
That’s bad news, by the way, for the new dating-centered comedies coming out next season, especially for NBC’s unpleasantly titled “Friends With Benefits.”
“100 Questions,” premiering Thursday at 8:30, reveals slightly more skill in its writing and acting than “Romantically Challenged,” but its characters are still paper-thin, serving only to set up and deliver unoriginal, insight-free jokes about sex and dating. Viewers will be hard-pressed either to laugh at or to laugh with the characters.
To its credit, “100 Questions” has an original concept. Charlotte, played by the British actress Sophie Winkleman, is a romantically challenged single woman who decides to go to a dating service that makes its clients give oral answer to 100 “scientifically formulated” questions. Sophie’s response to each question will provide the plot line, via flashbacks, for each episode.
In the premiere, Charlotte answers the question “What brought you here?” by recounting a recent bad date. “Bad” is an understatement. In flashbacks that take up most of the rest of the episode, we see her boyfriend of three months, a stereotypical unsuitable suitor, propose to her on the giant camera at Yankee Stadium.
In one of the few jokes that couldn’t have been on an episode of “Friends” — if only because the concept of viral video didn’t exist back then — we learn that a clip of her refusal has been posted on YouTube, and she’s now widely known as the “Yankee b----.”
In a subplot, such as it is, her friend Leslie (Smith Cho) is hit on by a fan in full makeup who turns out to be an albino.
Whereas Charlotte is a pretty cipher, the other friends fall into predictable dating-comedy slots. Leslie is the smart, picky girlfriend; Jill (Collette Wolfe) is the dumb, slutty girlfriend; Mike (played by the show’s creator, Christopher Moynihan) is the smart, neurotic guy; and Wayne (David Walton) is the dumb, studly guy.
As is customary in shows taped in front of a studio audience, the supporting players all hit their punch lines hard, even when the lines have only trace amounts of humor in them. Judging by the liberal use of the laugh track, those trace amounts proved undetectable during taping.
Winkleman plays Charlotte more subtly, but that may be because the character is so vaguely written. The writers may have hoped that she would work as a kind of blank screen upon which female viewers could project their own self-image, thus building identification with her, but that raises the question why the producers chose a British actress. Many young women in the TV audience probably see themselves as basically attractive but unlucky in love; few believe that they have an English accent.
Despite one of the early jokes, it’s also hard to imagine that the slim Charlotte would claim to be more than 15 pounds lighter than she is.
Some of the non-character-driven jokes work. While Charlotte and her ex-boyfriend have an animated argument out of earshot, the others pretend they’re playing charades.
But rather than settle for surface laughs, the show gets all emotional toward the end. The laugh-track machine switches off, and suddenly we’re meant to see Wayne as a troubled soul and Charlotte as a true believer in love.
To succeed, a romantic comedy like this needs a lighter, or at least steadier, touch. Just as the original “Star Trek” never finished its five-year mission, “100 Questions” will be lucky to hit double digits.
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