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 $#*! My Dad Says

 

(June 19^th, 2010.  -  Editor)               William Shatner, Jonathan Sadowski, Will Sasso, Nicole Sullivan, Stephanie Lemelin tar in the half hour situation comedy $#*! My Dad Says.

Based on the popular Twitter feed by Justin Halpern, the comedy follows Ed Goodson (Shatner), a forthright and opinionated dad who relishes expressing his unsolicited and often wildly politically incorrect observations to anyone within earshot.  Nobody is immune from Ed's rants, including his sons, Henry (Sadowski), a struggling writer-turned-unpaid blogger; and Vince (Sasso), the meek half of his husband/wife real estate duo with domineering Kathleen (Sullivan).  When Henry finds he can no longer afford to pay rent to his pretty roommate, and secret admirer, Sam (Lemelin), Ed reveals a soft spot and invites Henry to move in with him. Henry agrees, knowing that the verbal assault will not abate and now there will be no escape.  Describing their father/son relationship is tricky, but Ed will easily come up with a few choice words. 

I am rooting for William Shatner to be a success in this comedy, but he will need a lot of help from a lot of writers. If they can pull it off, they could have a modern-day Archie Bunker. But the chances of that are very slim indeed. Already the premise of his comedy is boxing in the characters, leaving little room for laughs once we establish a few basic facts. I just don`t know if this comedy will still be interesting and funny for a whole television season.

The serious flaw with this comedy is not the writing, or the star. It is the supporting cast. In particular both Will Sasso and Nicole Sullivan are people who look like they should be funny, but fail to deliver a laugh. Both have the potential to turn things around, but we need to see the funny, and fast.

The pilot episode was shot, reworked, recast and shot again. And still I think there is a lot of room for improvement. That combined with a very competitive time slot on Thursday nights could spell disaster for this comedy. But most importantly, I don`t connect with these characters. I`m not interested in their lives and I don`t really care how it turns out. That`s never a good thing for a television series.

 

-          Editor

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