Digital Spy presents Remote Patrol – the weekly column from New York-based TV critic Bruce Fretts, taking a look at what's hot right now in US television.
Fretts is a veteran of both Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide Magazine, where he penned the wildly popular 'Cheers & Jeers' column for 10 years.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Mulaney: Sunday Night Live?
There's a certain alchemy in any TV comedy: you can put all the right elements into the mix, but if they don't interact in the proper way, there will be no magic. Nowhere is that more evident than in the two live-action comedies Fox has inserted into its previously all-animated Sunday-night lineup: Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Mulaney.
Both come with a post-Saturday Night Live cachet: the Golden Globe-winning Brooklyn Nine-Nine stars SNL vet Andy Samberg, while Mulaney's titular star John Mulaney was a writer on NBC's late-night franchise. It's also produced by Lorne Michaels and features the skitcom's alums Nasim Pedrad and Martin Short as well as frequent early-years guest host Elliott Gould.
But while Brooklyn Nine-Nine continues to fire on all comedic cylinders in its second season, Mulaney stalled out of the gate and shows no signs of life. Fox recently cut the first-season order to 13 episodes, and it seems like NBC was wise to pass on this project at the pilot stage (not that they're having any better luck with their lame freshman comedies: A to Z and Bad Judge also just received network death sentences).
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The problem with Mulaney... oh, where to begin? Let's start with Seinfeld, to which this show owes a tremendous creative debt that it will never be able to repay. It's about a Manhattan stand-up and his platonic female pal (Pedrad, who's as annoying as Julia Louis-Dreyfus – another SNL survivor – is endearing) and his painfully 'zany' male buddies (Seaton Smith and Zack Pearlman, who seem to be in a contest to see who can be less appealing, and they're both winning).
Gould, so great on Ray Donovan, induces nothing but cringes with his strangely dated turn as John's gay neighbor, and Short seems to be in his own, better show as John's self-absorbed game-show host boss.
But the real problem with Mulaney is the writing. Characters speak lines that might be funny as part of a stand-up act but ring false as dialogue. For example: "I feel like vaginas the way I feel about America: I love it, but sometimes it does things that disgust me." Or: "I'm on a Game of Thrones [menstrual] cycle: winter is coming, but not for a while."
Brooklyn, on the other hand, depicts believable characters, even in its heightened state of comedic reality. In its crazy concoction of a cast, sketch artists such as Samberg and The State's Joe Lo Truglio bump against stand-ups (Chelsea Peretti, guest Patton Oswalt) and serious actors (Andre Braugher and – new this fall – Kyra Sedgwick as his bête noire).
Yet it all works because the writing is so sharp. Constantly re-combining characters – Lo Truglio and Peretti's polar opposites have been hooking up – Brooklyn Nine-Nine spreads out its gags among its flawless ensemble, which also happens to be impressively diverse (Melissa Fumero, Stephanie Beatriz – dos Latinas! – and the powerfully hilarious Terry Crews).
As for Mulaney, the only stunt that might save it now would be a crossover: if only Brooklyn Nine-Nine's cops could bust their fellow Fox show's writers and throw them in jail for their crimes against comedy.
