Can A Sitcom That Doesn't Have A High-Concept Premise Get A Shot On TV Anymore?

While original summer programming on the big five networks (yes, we're counting The CW) tends toward weird and/or ill-advised reality programming (yes, we mean Oh, Sit!), Fox is breaking with tradition by launching a new sitcom: The Goodwin Games, which premiered last night and led to our asking a few relevant questions.

What, if anything, does the existence of this show tell us about The State Of The Sitcom In 2013?

Last week, I complained about the way How I Met Your Mother had stretched its premise way past any reasonable point. (I didn't say how much it annoyed me as a viewer to have my time imposed upon that way, but let's pretend I did.) And what do you know: two of the three credited creators of The Goodwin Games -- in which three fractious siblings must compete in a series of games to determine which of them will inherit the fortune they didn't know their estranged father even had -- are also behind Mother. Now, I'm not mad at Goodwin Games (yet), but the pilot piles on a lot of gimmicks high-concept elements: interjections (on VHS videotape?!) from the late patriarch, Benjamin (Beau Bridges); the introduction and playing of a different custom-made game in each episode (or so the pilot suggests); flashbacks to key moments in the kids' upbringing; all three kids' returning to their childhood home for the course of the game. If the regular sitcom stuff isn't compelling, all this other jazz is really going to weigh down the show. Like, would My Name Is Earl, with its karma/list-based redemption through-line work if it were premiering now?

On the other hand, the four sitcom cancellations that have made me saddest in the past couple of seasons -- Bent, Best Friends Forever, Ben And Kate, and Happy Endings -- are for shows that had pretty straightforward premises: people related by blood or friendship, reacting to situations, in episodes you could pretty much watch in whatever order you want. Is their failure proof that audiences want more of a frame around their sitcoms? Or is the ongoing viability of low-concept sitcoms like Mike & Molly, Modern Family, Raising Hope, and even Community (which, despite its individual high-concept episodes, has a pretty conventional premise) proof that those other shows I liked were just poorly cast or scheduled?

I don't really have an answer. I'm just asking.

Is a summer sitcom launch going to work?

I have to think that, based on the progression from game to game, this is a show viewers will have to watch every episode of, in order. And while the DVR has probably obviated the conventional wisdom that audiences won't engage with a new show during the summer because they're too busy having cookouts or watching fireworks or going waterskiing or whatever the hell, it's still a commitment to get on board with a new, untested serial sitcom. Not to mention that, if it's getting launched in the summer, it probably means the network isn't confident enough in it to have held it for fall, and therefore it's probably going to get cancelled anyway. I mean, maybe a summer launch means that Fox's threshold for success will be lower than it would be in September, but I would still be wary of getting too attached.

How do we feel about T.J. Miller having replaced Jake Lacy?

If you Google the show title or look it up on IMDb, the first images you see -- still -- are of the show's original cast, which had Jake Lacy (most recently Pete on The Office) playing the baby of the Goodwin family; he's since been replaced by T.J. Miller, which is going in a very different direction indeed. Not that I know what Lacy's take was on the character, a recidivist fuckup, but Miller is less an actor than a standup comic, so the persona you've seen in his Comedy Central specials or in his standup/sketch show Mash Up is pretty much the same here. I like Miller's comedy, but he is a BIG personality, and it's possible that a sitcom isn't the right venue for his...whole deal.

Is this the best show a super-competitive party game fan can hope for to tell the very real, very serious story of her specific experience?

When the Goodwin kids learn that the heir of Benjamin's fortune will be the winner of a game of Trivial Pursuit they all play, they note that they have never gotten through a game without physical violence -- and possibly haven't ever finished a game at all. There are some who know me personally who will say that line made them think of me, which is a gross misrepresentation: I would never walk away from a game of Trivial Pursuit or any other game I think I might have a pretty good chance of winning. If I can tell I definitely won't win...yeah, I will sometimes stop trying; this happens a lot in Letterpress. But I still won't quit! I have dearly loved game night episodes of Friends (the immortal "One With The Embryos") and Happy Endings, and while you'd think that a whole game night series is, therefore, an automatic win with me...honestly, the title is really misleading with regard to how many game-playing scenes actually made it into the pilot: not nearly enough. And since the Goodwins all walk away from the Trivial Pursuit game in the pilot, it's difficult for me to care which of them ends up victorious, because they have already proven themselves to be a bunch of chickenshit quitters.