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The Neighbors S01E01: "Pilot"

Here's a good litmus test to determine whether you will like ABC's new comedy The Neighbors: First, consider the concept: a regular human family moves into a gated community that's exclusively occupied by aliens disguised as humans. Then imagine the chasm of cultural differences between a regular Joe Jersey family and aliens that learned about human society from 1950s sitcoms and Sports Illustrated. Finally, add alpacas, way too much pie, and buckets of green ooze. Did you laugh? It's okay, we once did, too.

But here's the real test: Repeat that concept over and over for 30 minutes. Are you still laughing? How about if you imagine that same concept repeated over and over and over and over for an entire season's worth of television. Still laughing? EXACTLY.

The Neighbors is one of those high-concept (What if we like totally lived next door to aliens, dude?) comedies that's too scared to go beyond its original premise because it feels naked without it. This is a show about humans that live next door to aliens, and that's all it is. Ninety-nine percent of the jokes in the show are some spin on "Humans are from Earth, Aliens are from wherever the heck they're from," creating an atmosphere of softcore racism where our inner bigot can feel comfortable making fun of others. In this case there's no watchdog group screaming for aliens rights, though. However, I wouldn't be surprised if that meddling PETA (or PET-ETs, har) stepped up with complaints.

One larger problem for The Neighbors is that it ignores a fairly basic rule of comedy: have funny people on the show. Jami Gertz, who was more comical as a brooding vampire slut in The Lost Boys, is the biggest name in a cast that I think was assembled on a first-come-first-cast basis. There's a chance that Simon Templeman, who plays the alien leader Larry Bird (ha! Sports names!), will be able to muster up a few laughs, and Wilt's youngest kid is weird enough to draw your attention, but everyone else's comedic chops fail to go beyond their costumes and goofy grins. The Neighbors is filled with anti-acting, most of which involves standing still and erect with their arms by their side in a lazy effort to define these lame aliens as clueless visitors, even though they've been here for a decade. Compare that to the also-weird Thermians of Galaxy Quest, extra-terrestrials that also had trouble fitting in with humans but still managed to pull of individual personalities. That was funny. But that also had Enrico Colantoni, Missy Pyle, and Rainn Wilson.

With all that said, it would be premature to completely write the show off, as there's satirical territory to explore; I'll be sticking with The Neighbors for at least four episodes, and I'll let you know if it gets better. The idea of aliens living on human terms and reflecting on our own behavior has potential to be hilarious and insightful. But as of the first two episodes, that planet is light years away.

– It's important to distinguish betweenthis from other bad comedies out there, because The Neighbors at least deserves credit for not being entirely terrible. Compared to last season's Work It, which put men in women's clothes and probably resulted in many lonely nights on the couch for its creators after nuking women's rights back to prehistoric times, The Neighbors is entirely unoffensive. So it's got that going for it. Despite what others have said, it's not even the worst new comedy of the season (Guys With Kids, Partners, and Malibu Country are far worse).

– This show does get points for casting for diversity, as most of the human flavors are represented here.

– Who ok'd the athlete name joke? And then who ok'd the constant giggling at the name "Dick Butkus" joke? Both of those people should have their comedy cards shamefully burned in the middle of Times Square.

– The show's one-trick humor was obviously going to be run into the ground like a UFO in Area 51 (YES I JUST MADE THAT "JOKE") in the pilot, but I'm sorry to report that the trend continues in Episdoe 2, when the humans and aliens go to the mall. Of course the dad alien gets naked. Sorry for the spoiler.

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We're previewing as many of the season's new shows as we can in a little feature we like to call "Hey TV.com, Should I Watch [show name]?" This afternoon that [show name] belongs to ABC's new comedy The Neighbors. Should you watch it? Read on to find out, or for those of you who are in a rush, NO.

Tell me about The Neighbors!

What would happen if a gated community populated by a bunch of aliens disguised as humans welcomed a regular human family into its cul de sac? The Neighbors, that's what! This single-camera sitcom takes the joke of culture clash into orbit until it's burnt out upon re-entry, and then relaunches it into space again. And again. The same joke. Over. And over. It stars Jami Gertz, Clara Mamet, Lenny Venito, Simon Templeman, and Toks Olagundoye.

When does it premiere?

The Neighbors makes its series debut Wednesday, September 26 at 9:30pm on ABC. (Note: It will move to its normal time slot of Wednesdays at 8:30pm on October 3.)

Who created the show?

Dan Fogelman, the writer of Crazy, Stupid, Love, Cars, Tangled, and Bolt, scraped The Neighbors of the bottom of his shoe and sold it to ABC.

Who's the target audience?

That's an interesting question.

What are the bright spots of the show?

Sight gags, all them revolving around how aliens do things differently! Dogs? Heck no, these guys walk their alpacas! Washing the car? Nope, try a UFO, brainiac! Crying with their eyes? Wrong again, they drip green ooze out of their ears! There's actually a good heart at the center of the series that tries to show how family and love transcend galaxies, and the soundtrack dusts off oldies to create a timeless suburban vibe similar to that of old-timey shows like Leave it to Beaver. The Neighbors is being wildly panned as the worst of the new comedies this dreadful season, but it's not! It's only like the second or third worst. And yes, it's better than Work It.

What are the cons?

There's one joke here: Aliens are weird. And that joke is played out repeatedly in the pilot, which is to be expected. But Episode 2 falls into the same trap, indicating that the humor won't evolve that much. In The Neighbors' defense, one-joke comedies with worse ideas have been successful in the past. The biggest problem here is that no one in the cast is even close to funny, except maybe the alien kid, and it's just because he's a weird-looking kid.

Okay, final decision time: Should I watch or not?

No, I don't think you should.

Can I see a clip to judge whether it's as bad as you say it is?

You bet.

What should I drink while watching this?

Whatever it is, make sure you've got a lot of it. Maybe one of those giant glasses full of dry ice and weird straws to set the mood? Also, put on your favorite theremin CD!

The Neighbors debuts Wednesday, September 26 at 9:30pm on ABC.

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Revolution S01E02: "Chained Heat"

"Chained Heat" was one of the most eagerly anticipated episodes of television in this young season in my household, because second episodes of serialized sci-fi shows can be the most telling indicator of quality and competence. With high-concept shows, many pilots can get away with asking the same question over and over again; in Revolution's case, that question was, "Who turned out da lightz?" But it's the second episode that tells us what to expect each week and gets us comfortable with the characters. Well, the power isn't the only thing that isn't working in Revolution.

"Chained Heat" failed most tests as a second episode, staying roughly in line with the quality of the inept pilot and really defining this show as a modern-day ham radio adventure tale—or, for you more modern folk, an 80-plus-hour role-playing video game. And as anyone who's ever huddled around a speaker in the 1940s or played Skyrim for hours days on end knows, that means fetch quest after fetch quest after fetch quest. Go talk to this guy, go get this thing, go help out this villager who has been waiting impatiently for someone to come along and accept a mission. Yes, there are fights along the way, but even those become a bit of a drag, particularly when the outcome is so predictable (Miles will kill a bunch of people). It equates to a bunch of busy work, and while there's some sense of accomplishment in doing it yourself (Xbox achievements!), watching someone else play a video game is very low on the list of things I enjoy. That's what watching Revolution feels like at the moment.

This week, Miles' quest (which means it's Charlie's quest, too) was to add to the adventurers' party by finding Norah, someone Miles believes can help them find Charlie's kidnapped brother Danny (finding people to find people is apparently going to be a theme of the series). Despite traveling in the Illinois wilderness with no GPS, they located her rather easily as a prisoner in a yellow-tank-top chain-gang that was dragging a helicopter with all the fake exertion the extras' faces could muster. And thank God the only yellow tank top left for Norah happened to size XS, right fellas? Miles and Charlie sprung her—again, rather easily—but Norah wasn't ready to leave until she got what she was there for: a gun that she could sell on the black market (or give to the resistance). This didn't give us a real sense of story as far as "Hey we're watching a television show" goes, it just gave the show's characters something to do.

Which led to one of Revolution's action scenes in which the bad guys take an ass-kicking and pile up casualties by attacking one person at a time and the good guys suffer barely a scratch. Dear readers, we need to talk about these action scenes. I'm into the land-pirates thing, where swords are swashed and buckled and some of the guns require a gunpowder cram before firing. But the fights so far have been boooooring, and they're taking away the purpose of having a sharpened blade in the first place. No matter how many twirls and no-look slicing Miles does, I just can't get into the action because they're more ballet-like and less visceral than what swords deserve. Quick question: Would you rather be shot in the arm or sworded (fake word!) in the arm? Answer: shot, because there's a good chance you'll be able to do something with that arm again. If a dude comes down full force on your arm with a sword, the last thing you'll do with that arm is carry it to the garbage can and throw it in, because that sucker's coming off. That kind of violence needs to be on display in Revolution if I'm going to take these sword fights seriously. Can we get a blood spray or a limb falling to the ground? The show has no problem with blood when guns are involved, but all these swords do is make stuntmen flail sharply in the other direction. I know, broadcast television and all, but this is a 10pm show and if The Empire Strikes Back can show Luke's hand getting cut off (whoops, spoiler alert!), then Revolution can lose a limb here and there. I'm probably in the minority here, but try re-watching one of Revolution's fights when you have a moment. A good action sequence should still be exhilarating on multiple viewings. Repeated views of Revolution's fights are not.

Neville remains the best character on the show thus far, partly because Giancarlo Esposito is the only one with charisma and partly by default because the other characters are tiring chores. "Chained Heat" attempted to give Charlie a little more bite (they couldn't have given her less in the pilot), but only managed to pull off "meddling tag-along teenager." It was an improvement, and Charlie blowing away the warden with the sleeve gun was admittedly the badass moment of the episode, but she still has a long way to go before I think of her as anything more than a face that belongs in a makeup commercial. Miles remained on-course to be this season's half-written primetime rebel, but did some positive growing with feelings of familial responsibility. Danny, well, he's just there to look like a puppy. It's like he wasn't even on-set with everyone else, thanks to all those cuts to him staring blankly and saying nothing (seriously, I think all his bits were re-shot with him in front of a green screen). Aaron is Aaron and will always be Aaron. Oddly enough, it was ice queen Maggie who was humanized the most this week, with her memories of her children held prisoner by a drained iPhone. Team Maggie all the way.

We also saw that Revolution isn't shying away from the flashbacks to the early days of the outage, and that's both a good and a bad thing because it shows what Revolution can do and also what it isn't doing most of the time. The flashbacks are much more interesting than the "present-day" storytelling because the sense of danger is plain and close. Those days look a whole lot worse (and therefore interesting) than a decade-and-a-half later. That scene where that creepazoid grabbed young Charlie and threatened to smash her face in? That was the tensest situation in the entire series so far and made me want to spend more time in the freshness of post-energy anarchy than the Frontierland of 15 years later. It's not a good sign when the appetizers are better than the entree.

As for the big reveals and steps toward solving the grand mystery, so far it's just the typical trickling-out of barely relevant details. We learned that the computer girl is named Grace and saw some headless guy named Randall creep up to her and get his zap-stick ready, but it was so out of context we had nothing to actually process. Yes, he's probably a bad person, but without knowing why Grace has the computer, what it's used for, or even who she is, it all becomes a home invasion aside that didn't fit in with the rest of the episode. We also discovered that Rachel (Elizabeth Mitchell) is alive! Not entirely surprising because who in their right mind would limit the wonderful Mitchell to flashback duty? But what was surprising was how much the writers changed her situation. In the original pilot, which wasn't screened for the public, Rachel—then played by Andrea Roth—appeared in the final scene with her arms draped around Monroe like they were more-than-friends. Here, she was a prisoner and even attempted to Joe-Pesci-from Casino the bad guy, a total 180 from the original pilot. I'm guessing the character change had a lot to do with the recasting, because for the life of me I can't imagine Mitchell playing anyone but a sympathetic character and not a two-timing traitor. And if you're really into details, Aaron thinks the whole power outage was manmade. Yeah, we figured.

But what is really dragging Revolution down is the thing that was most interesting when the idea was pitched. The world isn't as interesting as we thought it would be, and it's full of inconsistencies. Why is Monroe staying in a defenseless camp of cloth tents while he keeps Rachel prisoner in a mansion? How is everything blown back to the Stone Age except for fashion? Why do the guns stay silent during the show's sword fights?

Revolution is being compared to The Event, FlashForward, and Terra Nova, which is partially accurate because they all share the same DNA. But The Event was misguided and made things up as it went along (with hilarious results), FlashForward was way too ambitious and collapsed on itself, and Terra Nova was just plain bad. None of those descriptions really apply to Revolution, which has its own problems. It's just not interesting (yet) and it doesn't have a sense of direction. Right now I don't see hope for it to improve.

– What was the real point of C. Thomas Howell's bounty hunter? Just to add color and give Miles the general location of Norah? And why did he run away from a handcuffed Miles after showing no fear of him in their earlier swordfight? And why did the goons release Charlie and Maggie just because Miles said to do so right before he gave up? Shouldn't those orders come from C. Thomas Howell? And is anyone else already over this C. Thomas Howell career comeback?

– Miles: "That's Norah. The hot busty one in the tight tank top."

– The most unbelievable thing in this whole show? Trying to pass off the idea that young Charlie would grow up to be older Charlie.

– Probably not a good idea to have a close-up shot of a deer carcass if it looks fake even from not close up.

– I'm not a huge fan of cutting off a conversation in the middle for dramatic effect. When Charlie asked "Nate" why he saved her, I wanted a damn answer, not a cut away to the next scene.

– Did Danny puff up a bit in between the pilot and this episode?

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