User Reviews

At the age of 40, now I head the first pilot episode I couldn't finish. It's boring, bland, and lacks ANY kind of humor that could work. I have a hard time understanding how any studio executive looked at the script, and said "Hey, yes, that's what we want!".

It's so unoriginal, that even an AI could've written it. Randall Park plays Louis Huang once again, Melissa Fumero plays Amy Santiago once again like the creators knew the show would crash into the ground right at the start, so wanted to keep the interest up by making the two main leads rephrase their most known roles.

I rarely give out 1-2 star reviews, because even bad products tend to have some redeeming qualities. Not this one though. It's unwatchable.

Not entirely related to the plot, by I used to work in a video rental during the time video rentals were going out of business (because of torrent, not Netflix at the time). The rental I worked was about as big, as the one in this series. It had exactly two employees. A guy from the other shift, and me. And at the end (in 2006), it struggled to stay open. With TWO employees. How on the Earth could a video rental work with SIX employees these days? And why?

I seen this on Netflix and thought I'd give it a chance. I used to work in a video store in the 90's (ironically it was purchased by Blockbuster and everyone was let go in 2003) hoping that the show would be a bit of nostalgia, it was not! It didn't really reflect at all what it was like working in a video store, most of the cast was awful and unlikable, especially Randal Park who is very annoying and untalented, not sure how he's a working actor and I'm very surprised to find out he is a straight man, he doesn't at all come off as one. Netflix puts a gag in the beginning about themselves being great and Blockbuster evil, which is ultra dumb since both are evil and were the downfall of video stores in general, they put a dig in on Amazon being evil later in the episode which is nice though. Overall, the show isn't funny and isn't really trying hard enough to be.

This looked liked a decent concept and Melissa Fumero sold me on it. I loved her in Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

The writing on this first episode is awful. It's clunky, cliched, and forced.

I get that having to act to a bad script is hard, but Melissa does not look good doing it. She comes off as a really bad actor. Which is sad because I've seen her be good.

Randall Park wasn't fantastic, but he came off as competent.

How much did they have to throw at these actors to get them to agree to degrade themselves on such a lazy pilot script?

Ham-fisted is this writer's approach to this story. Backstory and exposition? Just shove that in anywhere. And let's not sprinkle it in in a natural way through, let's really try to pack as much info dump in as we can in the dumbest places among people that wouldn't talk to each other like that.

I would have been happier to see them do some kind of text on screen Chuck Lorre vanity card-style rather than cringe my way through their best efforts to dramatize it.