Worst Week

This is one of those surprising shows. You know, the kind that you see by accident and are completely amazed by. I'm not very well tapped into the hype of television (got Tivo, so I don't see much in the way of commercials), so I don't know if it was given a big promo campaign or not, but I really hope the network gives it multiple seasons. The idea, a British import, follows an idea similar to "Meet the Fockers". An average good guy who seems to have cataclysmic bad luck is marrying (and having a child with) his loving girlfriend who comes from an uptight upper middle class family with a domineering father. There are also echoes of "Everybody Loves Raymond" here, with themes of overbearing in-laws and the quirkiness of family.

While I loved "Meet the Fockers" and "Raymond", in many ways I appreciate "Worst Week" because of some subtle but gratifying different choices made by the creators. In Fockers, for example, Ben Stiller's character is almost always alone in his antics. When something goes wrong and he finds himself in the middle of a mess his girlfriend is, along with her family, a judgmental observer, leaving the viewer to feel like Focker, alone and ashamed. Of course, she forgives him by the end, but it always felt a little harsh to me as this was supposed to be his future wife and mother of his child. "Worst Week", by comparison, places the girlfriend often into the role of co-conspirator, so that even if everything goes wrong you still have the foxhole "at least we're in this together" sort of feeling. And while I'm a huge fan of "Raymond", I like that the story of Sam and Melanie (the two main protagonists) is starting much earlier. In many ways Sam and Melanie are still kids themselves, and it's kind of nice to watch as they grow into their roles of husband and wife (and mom and dad) rather than picking up the story much later in their life.

All in all, the humor is well written and acted. Especially Kyle Bornheimer, who is a real find as the hapless everyman Sam. And Erinn Hayes, who plays Melanie, does a fantastic job of portraying the formerly rebellious girl all grown up, neatly skirting the line between hip thirty-something and quasi daddy's girl who is drawn towards a conventional family life. Every show I've seen so far has consistently gotten good laughs out of me, so I think that if you enjoy a good warm family kind of humor you will really like this show.

This is a rare example where the American version of a TV show is better than the British original. The original was merely frustrating in its Sisyphean contrivances whereas the American is more sweet-natured and the actors are more likable. I particularly loved the scene where a stunned budgie is mistaken for a growing erection in the hapless hero's pants while he watches his fiancée's sister breastfeeding – it's more complicated than that of course but still hilarious! The fiancée's father is played by Kurtwood Smith from Dead Poets' Society and many other good movies. Unfortunately Channel 10 in Australia gave up on the show after a few episodes because of poor ratings.

Melanie Clayton (Erinn Hayes) is seven weeks pregnant and she's announcing her engagement to Sam Briggs (Kyle Bornheimer) at the family gathering. In the pilot, he meets his future in-laws Angela (Nancy Lenehan) and judge Dick Clayton (Kurtwood Smith) in a diaper. He pees into the food and Dick slips on his pee. He mistakenly assumes that Dick is dead and tells the family with the distressing false bad news. The show expands with her sister Sarah (Jessica St. Clair) and her husband Chad (Hayes MacArthur), brother David (RonReaco Lee) and heart-broken Chloe (Brooke Nevin). Sam's friend Adam (Nick Kroll) comes to try to fix the painting of Dick that Sam ruined and starts hooking up with Chloe.

Through incompetence, bad luck and nervousness, Sam is the butt of all of the jokes in the show. It is very forced even more so than the usual sitcom. Every week has Sam doing something stupid. It gets a bit repetitive. Kyle Bornheimer is an OK comedic actor although his usual nervous act does get tired. It helps a lot whenever Erinn Hayes joins him in the stupidity. She needs to be more than the girlfriend trying to placate her parents and encourage her boyfriend. She needs to be as big of an idiot as Sam is.

For a comedy, I usually don't have to high requirements, one being of course that it should be funny. Well, it isn't.

One major thing with comedy is timing and chemistry. Recently, the people behind forgetting Sara Marshall, knocked up,etc have surprised me by doing rather simple story's that still feels fresh even though there isn't really anything new about them, yet it still works.

This show is quite the opposite. Some rather good ideas is completely lost due to poor timing and more or less every single joke being obvious a long time before occurring. I really though it would be fun after reading about it. For me, it really isn't. Actually one of the most disappointing show's I've seen in a long time.

Sorry folks, but this is, once again, a very bad attempt by Americans to remake brilliant comedies from other countries, and failing miserably. They have done this with a number of shows and it's getting irritating. While this isn't unfunny, the jokes aren't delivered well, with the exception of the father who is simply brilliant at delivering snappy laughs, and it seems to have been re-written for an American specific audience. If you haven't seen or heard of the original series, then you might enjoy this mildly, but otherwise I would recommend getting your hands on the British make. This is a mediocre comedy, with rehashed jokes, taken down a notch in class for a simpler audience. The sad thing is, this is the only version the mainstream audiences of Australia will see, like they did with The Office, Life on Mars and Kath & Kim.