Unhitched Becomes Unglued
Add comment March 10th, 2008
The Farrelly Brothers have a box office reputation for matching the bizarre and usually gross with the warm and sometimes heart-felt, as seen in hits like “Dumb and Dumber” and “There’s Something About Mary.” Unfortunately, in executive producing the new comedy sitcom Unhitched, the half-hour compression squeezes out most of what made the Farrelly Brothers’ movies so fun to begin with, and leaves behind only gross and grosser material. The show follows divorced Gator (Craig Bierko), who befriends several other ex-spouses and abruptly returns to the bachelor’s life. It’s a great premise, and one that might work – if the emphasis was on finding love instead of gross-out humor. But often the most original elements of the show – such as a bouncer finding work at a doctor’s office – winds up as just an end note. Bierko (Scary Movie 4, Boston Legal) is perfect for this style of quirky comedy, but right now seems like another lead wasted. Unhitched airs on Fox Sunday at 8:30 P.M.
The tagline of New Amsterdam is “Uncover the mystery”, and the mystery of a detective as old as New York City is an intriguing one. Unfortunately, New Amsterdam goes the polar opposite direction of Lost – giving far too many answers. By the first fifteen minutes, the entirety of the mystery is laid bare – John Amsterdam (Nikolaj Coster-Waldu) is an explorer bestowed with eternal life by Native American shamans until he finds his true love. When all is said and done, New Amsterdam just isn’t all that new. We’ve seen the period-piece TV show in “Highlander”, the immortal cop in “Forever Knight”, the love-related spell in “Angel” and the lone wolf cop who doesn’t want a spunky new partner in a dozen other TV shows. Coster-Waldu does a good job as Amsterdam, but the plot is just so poorly rendered his talents are likely to go to waste. New Amsterdam airs on Fox at 8:00 PM on Mondays.
