lauren stern pulls no punches…
Plot: Kate Fox(Daktoa Johnson) is a single mom who’s world is turned upside down when her brother Ben (Nat Faxon) comes to town with plans to crash the wedding of his ex-girlfriend Darcy. Ben drives Kate crazy for most of the episode until he saves her from some two-timing loser she is dating. Kate then helps Ben get the love of his life back by driving him to the wedding. When they arrive, they find out they are too late and Darcy is already married. At the reception, Ben reveals that he wants to stay in town and help Kate raise her daughter Maddie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones).
I have to be honest, when I first heard about Ben and Kate, I wasn’t interested in giving it a chance. The commercials didn’t seem that appealing to me and I’m not really a big fan of the dysfunctional family comedies. But, because I have a lot of time on my hands and because I need a new show to watch on Tuesday nights, I decided to tune in and see what all the fuss was about. I mean, the creator of New Girl came up with this, it couldn’t be that bad, right?
Wrong. It wasn’t worth a minute of my night.
Yes, that may be harshest thing I’ve ever said about any TV show. But this show is so boring and the characters were so annoying I felt like I was sitting through the longest 30 minutes of my life.
I really wanted to turn off the show after the first 10 minutes, but I wanted to make sure I covered every unlikeable factor. Let’s start off with the characters. To sum it up, most of them were annoying. The only likable one is the little girl Maddie and that’s only because she’s so adorable that no matter how hard you try, you can’t hate her. Other than her, everyone on this show is irritating, most especially Ben. I mean, I know he is supposed to be the “irresponsible brother” but does he really have to come off that dopey? There’s a fine line irresponsibility and acting like a fool: which one is it?
The jokes were also pretty terrible. I really don’t know why this was labeled as a comedy. Just because the characters are (supposed to be) quirky and have (terrible) punchlines doesn’t mean it’s a comedy. When I want to see a comedy, I expect to be rolling on the floor laughing at some point during the episode. At least once. But with this show, I never laughed. I didn’t even crack a smile. Instead, I was counting down the minutes until the show ended at 9:00.
The worst part about this show is it’s conventional and predictable story line. I guess my other comments wouldn’t make sense if that weren’t the case but it was just so dry. I mean, lets face it: the premise of this show isn’t something we haven’t seen before. A comedy about two siblings raising a child, hmm…that rings a bell. Oh yeah, that was basically the premise of the first eight seasons of Two and a Half Men.
After seeing the pilot, I think this show is going to be cancelled after it’s first season, possibly after the first few episodes. It’s definitely not one of those shows that’s going to blow you away, actually, let’s fact it: it was a giant snorefest. Oh well. I guess I’m going to have to find something else to tune into on Tuesday nights.
Wow, thank you for the incredibly honest review of this show. I didn’t get to catch the pilot but I plan to. It could be that you’re right and I won’t enjoy the show but I’m one of those people that always has to find out if it’s true. So I‘ve got my Hopper set to record the show next week so I can decided if this show is any good. I want to like the show because the trailer makes it out to be funny and cute but that may be just to spark interest in the show. I don’t know if any of my DISH co-workers have seen the show but there aren’t very many people I know that have mentioned the show. I guess we will find out how my view of Ben and Kate goes down next week.
Ben and Kate was alright. Give it a few weeks. So far this season is getting off in a bad start.