Should You Hang Out With Weird Loners?

What Is This Thing?

Caryn and Eric, owners of neighbouring townhouses in Queens, find it easier to come to terms with the idea that they're destined to be alone forever when, one one fateful day, their paths cross those of their new roommates. Maybe their live will be less lonely if they can band together as a screwball foursome rather than just individual freaks?

When Is It On?

Tuesdays at 9:30 PM on Fox.

Why Was It Made Now?

If recent history is anything to go by, it was made now because Fox's head of comedy can't stand for any former Happy Endings cast member to be unemployed for more than a few days in a row. This time, it's Zachary Knighton's turn.

What's Its Pedigree?

Knighton plays Stosh, Eric's cousin, whose recent firing (over sleeping with a higher-up's lady) also got him evicted from his company-owned condo and who thus moves in with Eric following the death of Eric's father. Becki Newton, late of Ugly Betty and a long stint as a Barney love interest on How I Met Your Mother, is Caryn; Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip's Nate Torrence -- or, as my esteemed colleague Joe Reid dubbed him at the time, "Soratio Hanz" -- plays Eric. Series creator Michael J. Weithorn previously brought us The King Of Queens; here he partners with Jake Kasdan (New Girl, Freaks & Geeks), who also directed the pilot.

...And?

As the leads are being introduced/showing off their weird/loner credentials in the early going of the pilot, an onscreen chyron tells us that Caryn is thirty-seven, and I won't lie: speaking as a forty-year-old, that alone was enough get me on Caryn's side. It's not just because we are of a similar generation -- lots of current sitcoms revolve around women who are Caryn's age or older -- but because she's not being presented to us as starting over after a divorce, like Jules of Cougar Town or Liza of Younger or (my personal favourite forever) Ann of One Day At A Time. Caryn is, unambigously, in her late thirties and still trying to figure out which compromises are worth making for the sake of having some version of a happy life. Sure, she spends a good part of the pilot trying to follow through on her wrong choices -- jumping into marriage with an emoji overuser she's not that into (not only due to the emojis, but it doesn't help) -- but both her anxiety over how much of her life is slipping away while she's single and her gleeful embrace of her new tribe feel organic to her character, which is due in large part to how good Becki Newton is, in general.

I also appreciate that the stoner character is a lady -- Zara (Meera Rohit Kumbhani), a painter and Caryn's new roommate. Usually that's a dude, at least on a network show. Kumbhani has a very un-sitcom-like style that makes her character the most surprising and fun to watch; her delivery on her line in the wedding lip reading scene is a good example...

...and I also like when Eric stumbles into her booth at a sidewalk art show, chooses one of her paintings, and tells her he only has $17 and she deadpans, "It's exactly seventeen dollars." Well, you'll see if you watch it.

...But?

Let's get real for a second: three of these four leads are empirically too attractive to be entirely believable as loners, much less weird ones -- and even the fourth could probably get by telling nearsighted ladies that he's Nick Swardson and he just put on a little winter weight. We've all known weird loners in our day, and none of them looked like they could play the mean blonde on Ugly Betty, you know? I can see that someone is trying by giving the three cute ones "commitmentphobic" as the weird attribute that makes them loners, but it just feels so expected. Were you to cast, say, Kristen Schaal, Mary Lynn Rajskub, and Paul Rust, then you could explore a wider range of weirdness. Maybe a network wouldn't sign off on it, but maybe a real (but funny!) portrayal of weird loneliness isn't a network show.

...So?

I found the pilot more interesting than, let's say, funny, which is not generally what one wants out of a sitcom, and not really even interesting enough for me to want to jump right on Episode 2. But maybe I'll do here what I did with Happy Endings, another sitcom that didn't click for me straight out of the gate: climb on board after a dozen or so episodes if I hear from other people whose opinions I respect that it got a lot better and/or that Caryn's mother, played by Susie Essman, got a much bigger role.