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From: "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-11 (Saturday)
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2025 13:37:45 -0800
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On 1/12/25 1:05 PM, anim8rfsk wrote:

> Ian J. Ball <ijball@mac.invalid> wrote:
>
>> I barely feel recovered enough to do one these, but here goes.
>>
>>
>> What did you watch?
> 
> ON CALL covered in its own thread.

I will get to this. But I will probably finish "The Rings of Power" S2 
first.

> SHIFTING GEARS on the Disney+/Hulu

Amazing! I also watched this yesterday, and I forgot to mention it!

Also, Fox is really f**king up their streaming strategy - as I 
predicted, Hulu has "Animal Control" again, but only season #3, no 
season #1 or #2: Fox is providing *no* real means to view previous 
seasons of this show outside of paying extra for it via Apple TV, etc. - 
I'm not going to play that game.

> Unfortunately, this was just OK. Tim Allen seems tired and Kat Dennings
> seems like she hasn’t done sitcoms before. It was very stagey and the laugh
> track is intrusive and horrible. The supporting cast are all second rate.

I actually liked the dopey teen son - I think there's potentially 
promise with this one.

But I'm not sure why Seann William Scott and Darryl Chill Mitchell are 
there as they don't seem to have much to do.

> But the main problem is the writing. Predictable and sloppy. and apparently
> not in continuity with itself. When Kat first appears with the kids Tim
> acts like he hasn’t seen her in 15 years and didn’t even know about them.
> But later we find out they’ve been in touch all along.

I'm going to cut them slack, as it's a pilot.

My take:

This is very much a "Tim Allen" sitcom - it hits all of the usual notes: 
Allen is a cantankerous old conservative who fixes up(?) classic muscle 
cars; Dennings is a cantankerous younger... liberal(? - we get basically 
two hints on this, and not much else) soon-to-be divorced single mom 
without a job. They're "estranged", but she moves back home with her two 
kids - wackiness will ensue!!1!

However, the big difference? - This is the first Tim Allen sitcom 
without a wife. I'm not sure how that is going to work.

Otherwise, Dennings is basically playing some morphed version of 
Alexandra Krosney's/Amanda Fuller's daughter character in "Last Man 
Standing" (presumably, Dennings' character will fall somewhere in 
between those two extremes).

I found parts of this amusing, but it is probably the weakest (so far) 
of Allen's sitcoms.

As I said, I'm not sure why Seann William Scott and Darryl Chill 
Mitchell are there, as they aren't given much to do, and I'm not sure I 
see that changing.

Also, I missed Dennings' "Two Broke Girls" character here - on this 
show, her character is much more dour than her "Two Broke Girls" one, 
and I didn't care for it.

I did come to like Dennings' dopey teen son; the precious younger 
daughter is an American sitcom cliche that hasn't changed in decades.