Connecting...

In a time when all people want is to escape the hell that is reality, some idiot decided to make a show that was an even more tedious and obnoxious version of that very same hell.

There is a short series in Australia called Retrograde that ran earlier this year. Retrograde seemed a little fresher, maybe because it was first.

Wow. This thing has to be the lowest budget effort any network has ever backed. It could literally have been produced by having people talking in front of a green screen. Everything is static and oh, so boring. You could get the same effect by going to any low budget coffee shop and listening to the customers. I gave it 2 stars even though it's a one-star effort. The extra star is for having the hutzpah to actually con a network into making a pilot.

A group of friends stay connected during the pandemic by using a Zoom-like internet app. Annie is the hot gal obsessed with the TV show Cheers. Ben is the hot guy and they secretly like to date. Pradeep is hiding from his kids. Ellis is trans. Garrett and Ben's sister Michelle are a couple who likes quarantining. Rufus is overly concerned with conspiracy theory.

I like this group of actors and their characters. The premise and the filming structure is intriguing. I'm willing to give this a shot. The problem is its relentless obsession with present day social commentary. It needs to be tone that down for a network sitcom show. It's possible to do a once-in-awhile-very-special-episode but this one insists on making it the central theme of every episode. It gets tiresome.

This is original and it's "nice" finding humor in all the chaos of 2020. That said, the humor is on and off and the refreshing aspect of this show is unlikely to last after COVID.