The Winner

Everyone seems to rip shows up before they even get to know the character. This show is different in that it's set backwards in time and they can line the plot with jokes about how time turns out...

It's got some great moments between Rob and the kid, some might find it disturbing, but it's life for this underdeveloped adult.

Just try to put yourself in a good place when you watch it, I thought it was pretty funny, with new predicaments they are being placed it popping up everywhere.

Don't trash this so quickly...Rob was great on The Daily Show and Seth has his hand in it. There is a lot of foreshadowing and perhaps the program will break through and get some new elements.

In the future watch pilots neutrally, not hurtingly.

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?

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

Geez it's not the Next Great Sitcom(tm) or anything, but it's not even close to "1 star". That's just silly. It's better than half of the sitcoms currently on TV, but only barely, so I think a "6" is better warranted. There's some real chemistry with the cast, and I actually laughed out loud a couple times, so I'm giving it a shot next week, too. The last line of the second episode tonight ("This isn't us...") was very genuine and clever, and if the show can find THAT tone more often, it'll last the year.

One other thing: I was a huge, huge Arrested Development fan. But surely even the most ardent AD fan will acknowledge the quality went down season by season. That's the problem when you start so brilliantly. At least this show has room to improve. ;)

The Winner is an enjoyable show presented to us by Family Guy and American Dad! creator Seth MacFarlane.The show has a very original concept the love of geeky 32 year old Glen Abbott moves back in next door with her twelve year old son who is a mirror image of what Glen was as a kid.Glen and 12 year old Josh become friends and help each other out in life, Josh uses Glen's childhood knowledge to score girls his age while Glen uses Josh's knowledge to form a relationship with Josh's mom.Yes it is far fetched and wacky but it's told in a way that works and makes it all seem possible.Most of the nay sayers of this show will claim it sucks simply because it has canned laughter then go on a rant about shows with canned laughter and how "bad today's shows are" or b*tch about Arrested Development being canceled.In many of the other reviews you'll see very little information on the show they may say "it's predictable" or "it's unoriginal" then rant about everything they find wrong with todays TV shows and hardly analyze The Winner at all.The Winner primarily focuses on awkward situations and embarrassing moments to draw laughter from you much like the American Pie movies.The character is a loser , virgin, nice guy, who's too geeky for his own good he's basically a big kid with little to no knowledge of the adult world (examples being showing up for a job interview without a resume, going to a penthouse for sex lessons, and using his $250 paycheck as a pick up line.Alison is the sweet, trusting girl next door who has great comedic timing she's sort of the "normal" character.Josh is a geeky houndog who wants girls but isn't very good with what to say basically a child version of the Glen character.Glen's parents with whom he lives with are the typical squabbling old coots the father a real hard@$$, the mother a nurturer.The show isn't perfect as a lot of the situations are very unbelievable and the fact that Alison would be so trusting of Glen around Josh (especially in todays paranoid society)is very unrealistic.The show is fun and without any of the random humour or pop culture references you see on Family Guy, or any of the political humour you see on American Dad! this is just a harmless show that gives you more laughs than the average sitcom like According To Jim or Til' Death.The series airs on Sunday nights @ 8:30.See for yourself.