The Winner

Network: Fox; Genre: Sitcom; Content Rating: TV-14 (adult content, language); Perspective: contemporary (star range: 1 – 4);

Seasons Reviewed: Series (1 season)

Without the on-screen appearance of creator/writer Seth MacFarlane during promos for the pilot episode of "The Winner", the show might have gone unseen and unheard in a forest of obnoxious laugh-track riddled Fox sitcoms. MacFarlane has become a minor celebrity as the creator of the increasingly undeserving, under-performing neoclassic "Family Guy" as well as "American Dad". "Winner" is MacFarlane venturing out of his animated comfort zone, arrogantly thinking his involvement with such a trite sitcom is going to make it worth watching. Instead of parodying those obnoxious 80s/90s sitcoms or homaging them through an absurd cartoon lens, "Winner" is an unpleasant reminder of those days of childish leading men, cheesy sitcom sets and over-caffeinated studio audiences.

It's hard to even describe the half-baked plot of "The Winner". There appears to be no rhyme or reason for why anything is the way it is. We start with a still photo of a mansion and our hero, Glen (Rob Corddry) narrates from the present day as if we need an assurance that he won't always be a loser, then sends us back to the early 90s – the pilot takes place during the O.J. Simpson white bronco freeway chase – to show him as a sheltered, naïve man-child living with his parents (Lenny Clarke, get back to "Rescue Me", and Irene Hart) smothering him. One day Glen meets the impossibly beautiful Erinn Hayes as a neighbor and single mom, his childish ways finds him bonding with her child and into her life.

Simply nothing about the show works. The arrested development, mismatched unrequited love story has been done to death. The parents, the love interest, the friends – all cliché archetypes of sitcoms past. There's a bizarre, creepy element to the relationship between Corddry and the neighbor's son which MacFarlane plays up for cheap laughs. There is no reason for the show to be a 90s "period piece" given how many contemporary anachronisms rear their heads in the middle of the action (check out the movies of the future in the video store where Glen works). Jokes are retread from better shows that referenced those events back when they happened. Think "Seinfeld's" numerous takes on the OJ trial. Usually the sidekick and not the star, Corrdry takes center stage here, where his painfully unfunny act can no longer be ignored and it is evident that whoever told the guy he was funny in the first place deserves a long bout in solitary to think about what they've done. Corrdry does a lot of smiling and mugging for the camera here while the "audience" wildly overreacts to everything on screen as if in on a joke that we aren't or properly lubricated by a warm-up act working miracles.

On the back of "Family Guy's" post-resurrection creative slump, "The Winner" is not what MacFarlane needs. It's a lazy work from a guy once touted as the hip, young blood needed to jump-start the Fox network. "Winner" is proof that MacFarlane is a guy who needs to be told "no" by a network that shouldn't have let this unbearably embarrassing Frankenstein's monster of a creation see the light of day.

*/ 4

I really hate to be the guy who whines and complains about Fox canceling something like Arrested Development and green-lighting shows of lesser quality, but this warrants it. How bad is this show? It opens with a joke about a mother believing "O.J. Simpson couldn't hurt a fly!" (the show is based in 1994). That's the very first joke. That's the joke with which Ricky Blitt decided to launch his sitcom; which would be seen by millions of people who just finished watching The Simpsons. I changed the channel before the canned laughter even started, which my roommates found hilarious.

You want to know what the true sodomy of this show is on the American viewers? Fox aired TWO episodes of it on one night. One after The Simpsons and one after Family Guy. I seriously thought the ad for another "all new episode" after Family Guy was a mistake. True to word, the second episode aired. I tried to give it a second chance, hoping the O.J. Simpson joke was a fluke.

Whatever talent Rob Corddry had on the Daily Show did not serve him here. Whatever comedic insights Seth McFarlin and Ricky Blitt had in animation, it doesn't translate to live action. When you combine over-acting with meaningless situations meant to be awkward the end result is completely empty trash.

I'm very confident this won't last. Why? Because if Fox had any faith in this show, they wouldn't have given away two episodes on the first night. If you have a quality product you know people want to see, you milk it for all you can and spread out the goodness. Obviously, that didn't happen here.

For the record, I'm not a movie geek. I commented on one movie years ago. I could count the number of message board posts I've made on one hand. In fact, I'm making this comment rather than posting something on the boards because I honestly don't care what other people think of what I have to say. I'm an average viewer who was insulted by what I saw being presented to me. The saying goes, "if you don't' like it, change the channel." I did change the channel. Twice.

Personally, I think this show has some true potential - its main characters are a 32-year-old balding man and a 14-year-old boy that are so much alike that they practically finish each other's sentences. The concept of having not only Glenn (Rob Corddry's character) helping the kid (Josh) meet girls with what they both think are the best pick-up lines in the world, but then they turn around and have the kid helping Glenn date his own mom!! The fact that Josh feels comforted by the idea of his new friend getting with his mother makes the show worth watching.

For those of you who are not familiar with Corddry's work on the Daily Show, a lot of his quirks and nuances make the character and the comedy work - he really does make you think he has the mind of a young teenager (that has problems with talking to girls).

A blossoming young boy of thirty-two (>'.')>

Oh, yes, gotta love those laugh tracks!

I mean, what would we do if we weren't told when to laugh? If every quip was not indicated to us as being funny by uproarious laughter each time? Forget those shows which are CLEVER and require a modicum of brainpower to appreciate. In fact who needs cleverness at all when you have the LAUGH TRACK! When something is supposed to be funny - cue up that laugh track and we'll KNOW it's funny! Not because anything inherently made it funny but because we were told so.

Oh, the off-color jokes, you ask? Why did they bother to write them when we have the LAUGH TRACK telling us to be amused? Well, for SHOCK VALUE, of course! I mean, you must differentiate this laugh track guided show from the myriad other laugh-tracked shows. While we're laughing something will somehow deeply disturb us - even though we don't know why because we KNOW it's funny since the LAUGH TRACK is telling us so. So we're laughing and we're shocked. The one-two punch on which we dumbed-down Americans thrive today.

Yes, forget quality when you can have a LAUGH TRACK! HAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH hee hee ha ha ha ha ho ho..... HUH?

To the guy who couldn't believe they would air this show after the simpsons and family guy, as if it's disgracing those two programs, you gotta be kidding me. The simpsons and family guy are sooooo over the hill. It's been years since I've laughed out loud at a new episode of simpsons or family guy, and I used to be one of the biggest fans around of those two shows. Rob Cordry, while his acting at times was a little ridiculous, was hilarious nonetheless and delivered most of his lines fantastically. And I love how he interacts with the 14 year old kid- some of the stuff they said to each other was priceless. To snuggy bear, based on the name you chose for yourself, I'm not surprised you were offended by this show. If it's too edgy for you, try switching over to Nick, Jr.