Written by Scott Clifford
There is a leak in my brain called “sanity” and The Neighbors is here to fix it. The Neighbors is a television series on hulu.com created by the infamous Tommy Wiseau, the director of The Room. Much like The Room can only be considered a movie in the loosest interpretation possible, The Neighbors is barely a television show. To make things worse (or maybe better), there are twelve episodes of this crap to enjoy for the rest of our lives. Since this series is going to be a marathon through hell instead of a sprint, I’m going to start slow with the first two episodes, “Meet The Neighbors” and “Princess Penelope Arrives.”
D-list porn stars and random people play most of the characters in this series so I’m not going to tell you any of the actors’ names in order to preserve their reputation. The main character is a landowner of a stock footage apartment complex named Charlie (Tommy Wiseau). He mostly sits at his desk, gets into conversations that make me want to jump off a bridge, and is pretty much a waste of life. Wiseau also plays a drug dealer named Ricky Rick by wearing a blonde wig instead of a black one. Rick acts as the series antagonist but that’s about as truthful as the bowl movement I had this morning being an antagonist to writing this review. I suppose that there are other characters as well. There is a woman named Philadelphia (yeah I know) who is blonde and has huge fake breasts. That’s her character. There is also a guy who constantly dribbles a basketball and borrows money. He’s really bad at paying people back. There’s also a stoner guy who lives in apartment 420 and wears a T-shirt with a giant marijuana plant on it (get it?!!?).
I also can’t forget about Patricia, a caricature of black women that would make Uncle Tom blush. She has a pet chicken and constantly yells at people about it in some way throughout the show. Do you see the pattern here? There aren’t really any characters, just racism for no reason. I may have missed a few details (someone attempts to kill himself in order to get a job???) but no one can force me to watch this again. I think that it’s written in the Geneva Convention somewhere. Anyway, time to move on to the “plot.”
“Meet the Neighbors” takes the opportunity to introduce the audience to all of these worthless people as Patricia yells at everyone while trying to find her chicken. Let’s not forget about guest character Joe Spielberg, an Asian kid who “has a license and a job and everything.” He applies to live in Charlie’s building after a hot girl pulls a twenty out of her bikini while delivering her pizza. Don’t worry; there is no adult-rated sex scene because that would mean that something happens. Thankfully, Joe has a license and everything so he gets approved. So far he hasn’t shown up in the rest of the series. Also, Patricia finds her chicken.
In “Princess Penelope Arrives,” Princess Penelope…arrives. The Princess hails from Great Britain and stays at Charlie’s hotel for no apparent reason. As everyone meets her in Charlie’s office, the guy who tried to kill himself in the previous episode becomes Penelope’s butler. Her reasoning is that he’s wearing a bowtie and looks like a butler so he’s obviously qualified. Meanwhile, Philadelphia tries to explain that she isn’t attracted to women even though she clearly is. Remember, this isn’t a porno so nothing happens and this scene is a waste of your life. Also Rick’s girlfriend gets the stoner guy to give her a shotgun for free by putting him in a trance. Yeah that’s about it.
The technical aspects of this production are phenomenally bad. The sound mix is non-existent and most scenes consist of bad actors yelling at each other and pretending that it’s improv. It’s as if Tommy Wiseau is somewhat aware of the reason for his popularity now and is trying to be the next Tim and Eric but fails miserably in almost every category. The theme song is a terrible loop that is surely played in Guantanamo Bay as a way to torture the captives that are held there and the one establishing shot that is constantly shown to represent the apartment complex shows that there isn’t much effort being put into this series in general. If you couldn’t tell by now, the characters are flatter than a sheet of paper and this series is quickly jumping from one black hole (sexism) to another (racism). The only reason to watch this is to try and understand how Tommy Wiseau exists.
-3/10 stars OR 15 black holes out of 10
Tommy Wiseau’s The Neighbors is currently streaming on Hulu.
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