The Winner

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.

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

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?

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.

This show was promoted as "From the creators of Family Guy." If only this show was as funny as Family Guy.. Actually, eating lead paint chips is funnier than having to sit through this garbage.

I wonder how many laugh boxes they burned through on this first episode because they use laugh tracks every 2-3 seconds. I wish I were joking, they lay the laugh tracks on thick. Maybe they're REALLY hoping you're fooled into thinking this show is funny.

Oh and btw, all this show is is a VERY poor ripoff of "Get A Life" from 1990, a show that starred Chris Elliot... The difference is that show was actually funny! I doubt this show will make it past a few episodes, it's THAT bad.