Falling In Love With the Condemned: Discovering "Enlisted"

Enlisted high jinks

By Sean Tuohy

One day you find the love of your life. He or she has everything you want: brains, looks, and humor. Your friends like him or her and your parents do too.

Perfect, ah?

Well, how about if one day you have to watch him or her get whacked in half by an ax-wielding mad man with too much money. That's exactly what it felt like when I discovered the FOX sitcom “Enlisted.” I fell deeply in love with the show and they canceled it. I finally opened my heart to a new show only to have it smashed to a million pieces. FOX is like a husband in a Lifetime movie. One moment he’s loving and great, giving me great gifts, and telling me I look good in that dress, and the next minute he’s beating me with a broom stick in the bathroom.

To quote Backstreet Boys, quit playing games with my heart, FOX.

Falling in Love

If you haven't seen “Enlisted,” you're missing out on one of the most original comedies to come out this past season. For some reason, FOX decided to bury the show on Friday nights with no lead in. The show followed three brothers who were stationed on the same Army base in Florida. Staff Sergeant Pete Hill—who is played by tons of fun Geoff Stults (not a fat joke)—returns from Afghanistan after punching out a superior officer and placed in charge of a misfit platoon of soldiers.

So the plot line doesn't sound like anything new—we've all see military-based comedies before—but “Enlisted” stands out because of its wit, characters, and, most of all, its heart. It was really easy to fall for the characters that populated the show's world. You rooted for them because they seemed like real people. The jokes were well developed, so you could tell that the writers had fun crafting each line of dialogue. But what really got me was the fact that Peter Hill was dealing with PTSD and that weakness was something that the show was exploring. Given enough time “Enlisted” could have gone to great places with these characters and, because the show was so well written, the audience would have gone with them.

Mad Ax Men

FOX canceled the show because of low ratings. Why did the show get low ratings? Because FOX threw it in to the Friday night death spot. This is not the first time Fox has done this to a good television show. Christopher Titus’ award-winning show “Titus” was all but forgotten by FOX during its third and final season. FOX isn't the only one to employ these tactics, however, FOX seems to act like some an even crazier version of a Roman emperor when it comes to its television shows. If you read Matt DiVenere's piece on the canceled “ Surviving Jack," you see that FOX once again did not give a show a chance before axing it. I don’t work in television, so I am not going to tell FOX what to do, but I would hope that they will see the error in their ways and allow their next batch of freshman shows the chance to grow before cancelling them.

Sad Sean

I discovered "Enlisted" on a boring Sunday and need some background noise. Five minutes later, I was hooked. Something about the writing caught my ear. Writers—well, most writers—know good dialogue when they hear it and I heard plenty of it with "Enlisted." It first comedy since "30 Rock" to make me laugh out loud and truly love the characters. I was on cloud nine with my new show and then I found out that it had been cancelled. Did I treated this the same way I treat all heartbreak? By crying in the shower while eating a candy bar? No, this time I held in my tears and decided to let the writers of "Enlisted" know that they had done a great job via Twitter and then I cried. 

I could sit here and bitch and moan about how FOX screwed a great show (Wait, I kind of just did that) or I could tell you to go watch "Enlisted" by any means necessary because you are going to discover a great show.

I'll be ready with candy bars when you finish.

5 Things You'll Learn By Watching ‘Surviving Jack’

Christoper Meloni in "Surviving Jack"

By Matt DiVenere

“Surviving Jack” is a funny show starring Christopher Meloni (best known for his role Elliot Stabler on “Law & Order: SVU”) as Jack who takes the lead raising his children while his wife (Rachel Harris) attends law school. Oh, and it takes place in the 1990s.

Do I really need to say more?

Fine, here are five things you learn from watching FOX’s new hilarious comedy “Surviving Jack.”

Christopher Meloni Is The Man

I don’t know how else to explain this one. If you were a fan of him in “SVU” when he was playing a badass cop that took down the worst scum in the universe, all while having a soft side for his family, then jump aboard the bandwagon. Meloni plays a father, Jack Dunlevy, who is put in charge of parenting, while his wife, Joanne, goes back to school in order to become a lawyer.

Well, Meloni’s character clearly isn’t one of the most emotionally-supportive father figures on television. In fact, in the opening scene of the entire show, he makes his son Frankie (Connor Buckley) take a lap around the block for getting caught watching an inappropriate movie at 3 a.m. in the living room. Jack also goes head-to-head with his daughter Rachel (played by Claudia Lee). I suspect more loveably, yet hilariously embarrassing, fathering techniques as the season progresses.

Nostalgia Galore

The music, the clothes, the hairstyles—the 1990s are back! And no, not in some lame VH1 show where they make fun of your obsession with the last really great time period before the Internet ruined everything. Even the theme song and show’s opening clips are so 1990s that it almost hurts to realize where we are as a civilization. But this brings us back to the glory days with very subtle, but awesome 1990s references.

The Inner-Monologue of a Pubescent Male Freshman in High School

Remember when you were outrageously awkward? How about your first high school party? The first time you completely embarrassed yourself in front of your entire high school? Or how about that girl you really liked…do you remember how weird you became the second she started talking to you? What was going through your head? Chances are it’ll be the same exact things going through Frankie’s inner-monologue that narrates the show.

The Writing

Let me word nerd out on you for a second. The writing for this show is fantastic. Granted, it’s based off of the book “I Suck At Girls” written by best-sellers Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker, who are both the creators and writers for this show. My hat goes off to both of them, as well as their executive producer Bill Lawrence (“Spin City,” “Scrubs,” “Cougar Town”).

Nonetheless, the dialogue is so conversational that it sounds like actual conversations rather than forced crap that most of the new shows are using. From Jack’s sarcastic and outraged sighs, to Rachel’s overall disdain for her younger brothers’ friends eye-humping her any chance they get—everything is on the money. Even the interactions between Jack and Joanne are tight and serve as a fun reminder that they’re not just parents –they’re a married couple trying to live their lives as normally as possible despite their children’s countless issues.

There’s Always a Lesson To Be Learned

Just like any and every single television show that took place in the 1990s, there is always a lesson to be learned at the end of each episode.

During the show, you tend to learn a whole lot about parenting. These lessons tend to be hilarious ones, such as learning the ground rules of carpooling created by Jack or how excited parents get when their kids are out of the house for the night leaving them alone. However, at the end of the episodes, you learn that despite life’s tough choices and overall relentless attempts to knock you to the ground, the people that love you will always be by your side to pick you back up.

And if that person who is helping you get back up just happens to be holding a glass of scotch in your hand, maybe make sure it’s not a trap before letting them help you up—even if it’s your dad.

Never Human: How Promos Killed (Another) FOX Show

"Stop making shitty television shows and endlessly promoting them Gordon. You're letting the team down."

By Matt DiVenere

While Sean and Daniel talk about their favorite television shows and how they’ve made an impact on their everyday lives, I’ve decided to instead attack one of the networks.

I’m hoping that this rant can be a PSA to network producers, marketing teams and promotional teams across all of the networks in regards to upcoming television shows. So, without further ado, I give you my conclusion:

The more you try to stuff a new television show down my throat by running multiple promos, the easier you make it for me to actively root against it to succeed.

Case in point, FOX recently cancelled their “new hit show” called “Almost Human.” This science fiction meets crime drama show paired up a police officer (Karl Urban) with a lifelike android/robot (Michael Ealy) as his partner in the distant (kind of) future.

Want to know what I can tell you about the show? The android/robot’s name was Dorian and the cop doesn’t agree with the fact that he needs any type of partner because he’s way too badass to have some drone follow him around and help him.

Want to know why I know only that much? Because I refused to watch it. Not because of the plot, or the actors involved in the project. I mean, J.J. Abrams was one of the executive producers, so it clearly had some strength in the production aspect of the show. Hell, there’s even a petition making waves across the Internet to try and get the SyFy channel to continue the series, so clearly it had some type of following to it.

The reason why I did not watch even a second of this show is because of the putrid performance by FOX’s marketing and promotional team in regards to getting people excited about their new show. FOX force-fed us this show with countless advertisements, promotions, and “behind the scenes” videos on their YouTube channel, they violated the Super Bowl with commercials for the show, and even ran promos during “Almost Human” for “Almost Human.” Talk about overkill.

They didn’t want us to watch, they needed us to watch.

So, instead, I chose to actively root against them. I chose to watch shows on the Animal Planet that I didn’t even think could be a thing, like “Treehouse Masters.” I mean, who builds luxurious tree houses? How rich can you be?

See, this is a real thing.

And if I ever overheard someone talking about "Almost Human," which I didn’t personally, I would like to think I would have chastised them for giving in to this type of network peer pressure. Just from the sheer number of advertisements that were produced for this show, you would have thought it was going to be one of FOX’s biggest hits ever. However, despite their pleas and overall disdain for the common viewer’s retinas, FOX kept cramming it farther and farther into the souls of whoever dared watch any type of programming on FOX.

I'm going to turn my final thoughts for the “Almost Human” marketing and promotional team over to Jack Reilly, head coach of the Minnesota Hawks pee-wee hockey team:

“You could have been one of the greats! An’ now look at yourself. You’re not even a has-been. You’re a never-was.”