Free Agents

The cast is pretty good and it is funny, but it lacks the depth of the British version. Nbc took a rather dark comedy focused on two broken people trying to put there life together and turned it in to a cheer work place comedy focused more on an ensemble of wacky characters than the hardships of the two original characters. The original puts a greater emphasis on Helen dealing with the lose of her fiancé and Alex is in a lot more turmoil over his divorce. The restrictions on swearing and other crudeness may have contributed to its lack of substance but it seams to me the lack of character development is more to blame. If they had focused more on the relationship between Helen and Alex and less on the other characters it might have gone a lot further.

I had not seen a single bit of advertising for this show. I saw that it was starting tonight when I was browsing DirecTV, so I set it to record, strictly because Hank Azaria is always funny in anything I've seen him in.

He did not disappoint! From the premise, I didn't want to like the show and it totally won me over. Hank delivers great lines, and naturally has fantastic comic delivery, and manages to make even a slightly weepy sap come off as both sympathetic and charismatic - oh, and extremely funny.

Great job! If you get a chance to see this, and if it continues to hold up to the level of humor of the first show, you will be glad you did.

I think it is a refreshing new twist on the sitcoms that are usually on. It is two adults, they don't partake in excessive drinking, nor excessive illegal drugs, they have jobs to go to. They both have lost a love in their life and it shows the true "fog" they are in as they stumble thru their recovery. To me is seems honest, good natured and I think the characters do a great job. The comedy is crisp and real. I do love the Portland scenes, although I don't think they are filming up here. It's too bad it is against such other heavy hitter shows in the current time slot. If this show was on Friday night or Sunday night it would be around longer. I will watch it until they take it off...but it is better than all the reality TV that hogs all the time slots.

Firstly, the casting in this show is brilliant! These are truly talented actors who could pull off any show thrown their way given a good script. Unfortunately, the writers are sleeping on the job. Either they have no writing talent or no true inspiration. Given the number of amazingly talented comedy writers available to breathe much needed oxygen into this show, I would think that Enbom would want to change out writers STAT. A personal Plea to Mr. Enbom: Dear John, please hire Rick Overton, John Fugelsang or Andy Borowitz and give this show the emergency CPR it requires to stay alive! If there is no immediate drastic change, I predict this show will be off the air by it's 4th episode.

I kind of liked the premise of this show and even if it wasn't a 20 minutes 'laugh out load' episode, it was nice and had me at least laughing a couple of times. Good enough to keep me wanna come back for next week.

This series is probably not gonna be one of those series that wins any awards but will stick around for a while, keeping us entertained. But what do I know, it could very well be one of those shows that grows on you and becomes better with time. The jokes were solid, the cast were solid and the plot were solid, enough to make it on my watch list for a laugh or two on Wednesday evenings.

Check it out and have it on your regular weekly schedule at least, even though it won't be the best new show this fall, I'm looking forward to Terra Nova and Person of Interest, I will write my view on there pilots as well.