Neighbors from Hell

Despite the promo "from the studios that brought you Family Guy," this formulaic and unfunny show falls far short of Seth MacFarlane's clever work.

"Neighbors from Hell" is my signal to get up and do housework until the next show comes on. It's a weak message piece ("oil is bad") trying to fly on the coattails of the likes of Family Guy, couched in unsophisticated and sometimes even scatological humor a 10-year-old would find boring, and voiced by veteran comics who I believe are painfully aware of how poorly this thing is premised and written. What a shame.

On the upside, however, each week my house is 30 minutes cleaner than it was before!

I made it through ten minutes; consequently, I lost twelve IQ points and I have forgotten how to conjugate verbs in the past tense. There is not one redeeming quality to this show - no interesting characters, no snappy dialogue, no unique storyline, no groundbreaking art. However, if you're a fan of fart jokes, you might as well reserve the first season on DVD right now. In fact, if you were able to watch the entire first episode without feeling at least the slightest pang of embarrassment for being a member of the same species as the creator and writers of this show, you should take a long hard look in the mirror and contemplate the meaning of your existence.

This show is not for the faint of heart. It is gross out comedy for sure but if you can handle that, it is quite thoughtful and full of hilarious pop culture references. It is about demons sent by Satan to stop a drill from striking Hell. It turns out that the demons are more normal and perhaps moral than most of the people they interact with in this Texas company town. The neighbors and co-workers at the behemoth Corporation are usually more absurd than the Hellman family, except maybe for the perverse uncle and dog like Pazuzu. Will Sasso, Molly Shannon, Patton Oswalt, et al, are great with the voice work. Its great fun and I am pleasantly surprised each with how funny it goes and as the characters grow into sensitive caring beings.

The only good thing that came from this series is that Will Sasso and Molly Shannon's flailing careers are finally over.They are two people who are barely funny and only tolerable in short doses.Which explains why all their movies are terrible.Don't get me wrong, I went into this thinking it was going to be hilarious.I didn't have much faith in the stars but I was sure that Patton Oswalt and Kurtwood Smith would help the show and I was right about that last part.They are the only reason to watch this mess.They supply the only real comedy, even though I had to rewind almost every time Oswalt speaks because his character's voice is not very easy to understand.This is only the second show since Curb Your Enthusiasm that I couldn't finish and there were only ten episodes of this crap.I was actually able to muscle through ten episodes of stupid gum jokes on Curb.I'm just glad this wasn't on Comedy Central because they would have let it run for five seasons.

As soon as it started and heard the opening dialogue, I got a bad feeling. Not much of what happened the beginning of the show grasped my interest, and up to the end I realized, it never did. I actually guessed the torture scene with Britney Spear's "I did it Again" song. It gave me chills, to predict such a lame attempt at mocking someone. Last time I viewed a reference to someone being tortured to Britney Spears music was YEARS ago, where kids voicing a flash animated show did the EXACT same thing this show did. "How could it be?" ... I asked myself in disbelief.

I watched the whole thing. I always give shows a chance, especially when 2 people in it I am a fan of(specifically Kurtwood Smith and Patton Oswalt). But, it didn't help. I admit I uttered laughter at ONE line Kurtwood Smith's character said at ONE point. And the rest was just terrible. Too slow, not interesting, and lame references back and forth. I have never sat trough a show and feel shame/embarrassment just for watching it. This was me most of the show(confused facial expression) --> 0-o' . Maybe it's just the 1st episode that completely lacks interesting characters, dialogue, story, fails landing jokes and in more than one instance, is highly predictable. That said, I believe my last sentence is me being overly generous and optimistic.

This show sucked, and it was amazing how much so it did.