NBC’s ‘Undateable’: Unremarkable, but comfy as an old sweatshirt
It’s not edgy. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t break any new ground.
The most remarkable aspect of NBC’s “Undateable” (back-to-back episodes debut at 9 p.m. Thursday, KSNV-TV, Channel 3) is how unremarkable it is.
It feels like something that would have been sandwiched between “Friends” and “Seinfeld.”
Yet there’s something refreshingly cozy about a broad, mutlicamera, taped-before-a-live-studio-audience sitcom that has nothing to do with Chuck Lorre.
Confident ladies man Danny (Chris D’Elia, the only redeemable part of NBC’s “Whitney”) decides to help his new roommate Justin (Brent Morin), and all of Justin’s weirdo friends, with their love lives.
Things do not go as well as they’d hope.
Justin owns a bar he named Black Eyes, which everybody hears as Black Guys, and won’t stop singing in a glee club-y, show tune-y way. He also has a crush on his employee (Briga Heelan) that borders on sexual harassment, but in a cute, Ross-and-Rachel way.
“Undateable” is written by Adam Sztykiel (“Due Date”) and executive produced by Bill Lawrence, who created “Spin City,” “Scrubs” and “Cougar Town” and who, I’m convinced, will one day save the classic sitcom. Together, they seem to know that, deep down, Danny, is just as much of a doofus at heart.
“You think I just came out of my mom’s womb just crushing ass?” Danny asks Justin, while showcasing D’Elia’s heretofore untapped bizarre physicality. Danny seems just as likely to deliver a punch line as a series of karate kicks, like a caricature of Nic Cage, or even Crispin Glover on Letterman back in the day.
The early episodes of “Undateable” don’t entirely work, but they straighten out a few of the kinks as they go along.
The result feels like a comfortable old sweatshirt you unearthed from some dark corner of your garage.
