'Romantically
Challenged,' and then some
This new ABC sitcom revisits the old 'Friends' turf
By Tom Conroy
Apr 19, 2010
In these sitcomically challenged times, viewers are probably increasingly nostalgic for “Friends.” But they may have forgotten that show’s serious flaws: Some characters were ill defined (e.g., Monica), while others were overly defined (Joey). The actors’ on-the-nose line readings tended to play to the cheap seats. And the main players would routinely step out of character whenever a possible punch line demanded it.
ABC’s new sitcom “Romantically Challenged,” which is getting a plum time slot tonight at 9:32 p.m. after “Dancing with the Stars,” is like a knockoff of “Friends” that chooses to emphasize that show’s flaws. Focusing on the personal lives of young, single friends living in Pittsburgh, it will probably stir unpleasant memories of the generic sitcoms like “Suddenly Susan” and “Just Shoot Me” that NBC used to sneak in after “Friends” in the hope that viewers were too lazy to change channels.
The most ill-defined character in the new show is, unfortunately, the one played by its star, Alyssa Milano. Rebecca is a recently divorced mother who is re-entering the dating pool after 15 years of marriage. In tonight’s premiere, she decides to have her first one-night stand, with a guy she finds attractive but boring. Since Milano plays Rebecca as alternately timid and assertive, it’s impossible to see where this decision comes from.
Rebecca’s life is generally vague. She has a teenaged son, Justin (Israel Broussard), who is seen sitting around the house alone in the first episode and is absent and unmentioned in the second. It’s briefly stated that she works as a lawyer, but this is about as believable and in character as the jobs were on “Friends.”
Milano tends to give her lines naturalistic readings, which clash with the performances of her three costars, who seem to have better absorbed the direction of James Burrows, a master of studio-audience sitcoms who is an executive producer of this series and was instrumental in the success of “Friends.”
The “look at me — it’s my punch line” style worked years ago, when overacting was expected in TV comedy, but its overuse was one of the reasons audiences gravitated toward single-camera sitcoms. And it can be disastrous when the punch lines aren’t worthy of the attention.
The premiere script, by a sitcom veteran named Ricky Blitt, has the characters doing and saying things that no one would do or say if an audience weren’t watching, but it never goes far enough to allow us to enjoy the action as pure farce.
Rebecca is alternately protective of and dominated by her younger sister, Lisa (Kelly Stables), who is one of those TV-comedy female sidekicks whose every utterance is about how slutty they are. Stables gives her lines a sharpness and edginess that they usually don’t deserve.
The sisters are friends with a one-note slacker writer named Shawn (Josh Lawson), whose jokes are all based on either his refusal to work or his stated but otherwise undramatized desire to sleep with Rebecca. In the first episode, after claiming that he’s straight, he affects a stereotypically gay demeanor for the rest of the scene.
The episode’s B plot is all about Shawn’s odd living arrangements with his childhood friend Perry (Kyle Bornheimer), a buttoned-down yuppie who has apparently fed, clothed and housed Shawn for at least a decade. When Lisa tells Shawn that he is like the submissive partner in a nonconsensual prison relationship, he decides to go out and find his first job.
The prison-rape analogy is stretched out for far longer than is funny or comfortable. Moreover, harping on the absurdity of Shawn and Perry’s relationship only points out that it is, in fact, absurd. As he’s written and played, Perry would never put up with this situation. This only becomes more glaring when Perry and Shawn’s relationship is the focus of the B plot in the second episode as well.
By the end of the second episode, it’s increasingly clear that “Romantically Challenged” isn’t built for the long haul. Here’s hoping the folks at “Dancing with the Stars” have enough stamina to go back to those two-hour Monday episodes.
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