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katanaknights
Reviews
Transparent (2014)
Category cheating - Not a comedy and not funny at all
Labeling dramas as "comedy" is cheating. As simple as that. This show is not funny in any way. It does not try to be funny and fail, it simply does not try at all. There are no jokes falling flat because this show is not a comedy. There are fewer jokes here than on Game of Thrones, which is filled with funny moments.
This is done to avoid being compared to heavyweights like Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Mad Men, Homeland, Orange is the New Black and co. If this show were labelled a drama, it would not even get a nomination in the drama category, but by labeling it as a "comedy," the competition suddenly changes from Game of Thrones and Mad Men to Silicon Valley and Girls.
Casual (another drama "comedy") does the same "trick" and soon there will be nothing but light dramas in the "Comedy" category in award shows.
If it's such a great drama, why does not label itself as a drama and compete with the other dramas? Why does it shy away from the fight and aim to go in categories with comedies like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Louie? The drama and the story in the story is simply not good enough. The creators know it, otherwise they would not have done the "comedy" trick.
As a "comedy", I'll review it as a comedy. 2/10. 0/10 for the "comedy" and 2/10 for the production.
Casual (2015)
Not a comedy and not funny in any way
I'm giving it the lowest possible score, not because it's bad, but because of mislabeling. It's not a comedy. There are no jokes. You will not laugh here. There are more laughs and jokes in House, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy, Prison Break and many other dramas, that cut the tension with laughs.
Think of all the laughs with Sandor Clegane, Doctor House, T. Bag, Saul Goodman, etc. You won't laugh at all here. I watched two episodes and there were no jokes. It's closer to being sad than funny, more awkward and uncomfortable than hilarious.
As a comedy, it's 0/10. As a drama, it's 4/10.
I don't know why they would even label this show a comedy. Maybe so that no one compares it to the excellent TV dramas and so that it gets compared to actually-comedies-with-no-story and beat them for having a story and character development.
As a drama, it's weak and there are way too many great dramas on TV. As a comedy, it's zero. There is no reason for me to watch this show.
In short - if you want comedy and laughs, you've come to the wrong place.
Vinyl (2016)
It's funny that a series about chart/sales rigging and payola uses IMDb rigging to get a high score
After 1 episode, 30% of viewers gave it 10/10? And 30% gave it 9/10? Really? 60% of people think this is a 9/10 or 10/10 show? 1 episode in? I've been checking the ratings every week and it's incredibly suspicious. Reviewers are giving it bad reviews on blogs and newspapers, users are giving it low scores, but somehow this is an 8.2/10 show? Shows that get 8 stars and above don't have the distribution of stars that this show has. Any show or film that has a high rating would not have such a high distribution of 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 star ratings. For example, Breaking Bad, rated 9.5 on this site, has in its 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 star ratings: 0.2%, 0.2%, 0.3%, 0.5% and 0.9%. Vinyl has 1.3%, 1.5%, 2%, 2.7%, 3.7%. Check any show on this site with high ratings and 100k+ votes. The 2 - 5 star buckets do not go above 1%. The 1 star bucket is always high because haters gotta hate and rate as low as they can go, but when a show is getting sincerely poor ratings of sensible people giving it 2 - 5 stars, that tells you something.
This show glorifies payola and chart and sales rigging. It would not be a surprise to me that they would employ similar methods on IMDb. Art becomes life.
Onto my review: The show is simply not good. There are many great reviews on the user review section explaining the pitfalls and failures of this show, but many of those were reviewing the first double-episode. It's sad to say that 4 episodes in, things only got worse. The first double-episode has a whole list of clichés, of a story not following events by a checklist of random scenes held together by almost nothing at all. The next few episodes did not improve the situation. While the first episode was explosive and rock 'n roll, clichéd as it may be, the next 3 episodes did not keep that level of intensity, but did not use the slow-down to tell a story, but became style without substance.
Episode 4 had these events - Richie schmoozing his clients for half the episode, his wife talking to a divorce lawyer, clients waiting in the waiting room then getting an agent, the newly-hired agent discussing terms with Richie and one of the guys running the sales scam. There's also a 5 minute Christmas song and another 5 minutes for a live funk song. Most of the episode has Richie lounging in his office, drinking and doing coke with different people.
We're 4 episodes in and we're already in filler territory.
This show is incredibly poor and there's no end in sight.
Benched (2014)
Less funny than Suits
For a self-described comedy, it has fewer laughs than Suits, a drama with a few laughs.
The laughs per minute rate is too low. I watched whole episodes without laughing once and started to count the jokes. There's not that many of them. It's mostly a series of awkward moments, slightly droll anecdotes, nothing actually funny.
I saw this as a huge fan of Happy Endings. That show had it all and these solo acts ain't working. It's similar to the curse of Seinfeld. One Big Happy, Benched and Marry Me were all weak, while Happy Endings was amazing. I think they should've found a new home for Happy Endings or kept trying again and again (like "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared" both cult classics) until it was successful (Happy Endings was already funny). In "Marry Me" Annie is the same character as Penny was on HE and here Nina plays a very similar role to Jane on HE, but with way fewer jokes.
Episode 1 sees her having a breakdown at work, insulting everyone and everything (just like Annie's extended "Why won't you marry me?" rant on Marry Me) and getting fired/losing her job.
There is not much humor here. They recycle jokes 3 episodes in - the smell of the public defendants' office, the smell of the courtroom and the smell of the meeting rooms for jailed prisoners. Not only are the jokes repeated, Nina keeps complaining the smell over and over. The bad smell is a big theme in the first 3 episodes. It wasn't funny the first time, keeping complaining about the smell does not make it any more funny and doing it every episode over and over just makes it annoying.
Another example of a show that does not have enough jokes to sustain itself. There's just not enough jokes in there, the ones that are there aren't that good and the story is not funny on its own. You just end up watching some light, slightly weird court drama.
The supporting cast is a backdrop for Nina - they just set her up and add little to the show.
All these things should've been noticed reading the screenplay. I don't know how something this half-baked made it out on TV.
Welcome to Sweden (2014)
Not funny and season 2 is just another show about...
Wedding planning.
The show quickly runs out of clichés of Sweden and season 2 is just another show about wedding planning. The proposal, the bachelor party, the bachelorette party, telling the parents, wedding preparations, booking a place, meeting the priest, flying in the parents, etc. It's been done a million times - this show does it yet again.
There are no jokes left in this theme - everything has been said and done before. There is no new ground to cover. Why do it? Did Greg pitch a show about Sweden, get the OK, then run out of ideas and said "screw it, let's just make a wedding show?" For one, you can't make a show based on "In America we do this, in Europe they do that." It's barely good enough for standup comedy lines, not for whole episodes or a whole show.
And to run out of those ideas and just make a show about planning a wedding called "Welcome to Sweden?" The jokes are just not funny "Oh, female priest? My worldview is collapsing." "You should take my name," "No, you should take my name" or "It should be Evans-Wiik" "No, it should be Wiik-Evans." Some of the ideas seem to be lifted straight from "Marry Me" - the surprise party ruined by the bride going on an insult rant while everyone is waiting to come out.
Just terrible. There may be 5 minutes of comedy gold in 2 seasons of 10 episodes each.