Gary Unmarried
Wednesday 8:30, CBS
The Premise: A recently divorced dad deals with a new girlfriend, shared custody, and his ex-wife’s new boyfriend.
The Personnel: Created by Ed Yeager, who’s spent years and years producing mediocre sitcoms. Starring Jay Mohr and Paula Marshall, both of whom I like. Ed Begley Jr. plays the new boyfriend, and I was convinced that Gary’s daughter was the girl who plays Young Sarah on The Sarah Silverman Program, but IMDB assures me that I am wrong.
The Poop: This is an absolutely by-the-numbers sitcom, enriched by a really good cast. It almost feels like it should have come out twenty years ago, when divorce was rarely dealt with on TV. Of course, in my book, the multiple-camera sitcom with a laugh track is a dinosaur, so that doesn’t help.
There’s nothing in the pilot that hasn’t been addressed a hundred times before. It’s hard to be divorced! It’s weird when your ex starts dating! It’s awkward when your new girlfriend finds out you have kids! Divorced couples snip at each other! I love lamp!
It’s all pretty rote, and it’s to Jay Mohr’s credit that any of it makes an impression. While a far cry from Action’s Peter Dragon, he still gets in some good digs that would have fallen flat were he not the Zen Master of insincerity. There is something entertaining about seeing him work with kids, even if it does worry me that he’ll eventually be defanged entirely. (Did anybody else see the moment in an early season of Last Comic Standing where Mohr looked directly at the camera, with real pain in his eyes, and said “I used to do movies!”)
I’m a big fan of Paula Marshall, but Gary’s ex-wife is written as too shrewish, which she’s really not pulling off. Also, it’s sort of a boring way to write the character. Ed Begley Jr. has potential, but he’s playing one of TV’s most distressing clichés, the therapist who gets involved with a client. He’s engaged to Gary’s ex, but he’s also their marriage counselor. I assume there will be a future episode where he loses his license and faces possible criminal charges, because that’s what would happen in the real world. That’s such lazy and stupid writing that it makes me mad. They need to create an awkward situation for Gary, so they use this shorthand that realistically would have huge implications that they choose to ignore.
The Prognosis: I like Jay Mohr a whole bunch, but the writing lets him down. I could see watching it during rerun season, or if somebody trustworthy were to tell me that the show had gotten better. It’s pretty bland as it is. Your parents will probably enjoy it.
