I thought that the new CBS hour Love Monkey could be interesting, but I am sorry to report that it has all the earmarks of an old-fashioned mid-season replacement. It's derivative, somewhat unformed, and lacking any real inspiration. I mean, it's not terrible. In fact, it would be more interesting if it were terrible. What's so depressing about the show is the way you can smell the network committee craft of it. You can clearly imagine the pitch meeting.
"OK, so it's a male version of Sex and the City, but the plot is like High Fidelity meets Jerry Maguire." Which is a 100% accurate description, by the way.
--POSSIBLE PILOT SPOILER ALERT-- The show is about Tom (Ed's Tom Cavanaugh), a recently-fired record company A&R man attempting to figure out life and love in New York City. He has a quirky band of male friends, including the wasted Larenz Tate and the wasted-looking Jason Priestley. He has a wise/smartass best friend who could be a love interest, and he is attempting to parlay his sacking into a new, more morally clear career as the head of his own independent label.
Yawn. The writing is intermittently good, and there are a few funny moments in the pilot episode. But the material is stale, stale, stale. Worst of all, the actors know it, and it shows. Even Priestley looks a little worried, and you'd think he'd just be relieved to have a paying gig. The camaraderie of the guy friends is obviously modeled on the pack of professional New York women from Sex and the City, which is one thing, but the fact that their dialogue and behavior also seems wholly lifted is another thing entirely. Men don't really talk like this, and they're certainly not this outwardly supporting and kind. The dialogue makes some awkward nods to this fact, but most of the circle-of-friends business seems extremely unbelievable.
In one aspect in particular, Love Monkey really stinks: Tom is supposed to be The True Believer, a hip music geek with flawless taste who attempts to apply his earnest creative outlook to his A&R job. He's a guy who has racks upon racks of vinyl at his place, and gives Bob Dylan CDs as baby shower gifts. (Since he's also unlucky in love, he's basically an uninspired clone of the protagonist in High Fidelity.) The show makes a huge deal of this, costuming Tom in a porkpie hat and vintage rock tees, highlighting his attempt to launch his indie label, taking us inside CBGB's, and cutting in lots of ample performance scenes in small venues around the country.
So it's shocking that the writers and producers make so many obvious mistakes: In a big corporate meeting, Tom disses Hanson, calls them a "boy band," and equates them with Ashlee Simpson. Any halfway-serious music geek knows that Hanson write and perform all their own material, have produced several of their own albums, worked with hipster gods The Dust Brothers, and created "MMMBop," one of the most widely accepted half-ironic pop gems of the past few decades. Tom's Dylan gift is also all wrong: It's clearly shown to be The Essential Bob Dylan, part of CBS Records' mass-produced discount "Essential" series. It's basically a 2-CD greatest hits collection, and an uninspired one at that. Tom refers to it as containing "everything he ever recorded"--hardly--and as "less accessible" than a greatest hits CD, which is, in fact, exactly what it is. A real music hipster wouldn't be caught dead with an Essential collection, much less giving one as a gift.
But if, unlike me, you're a mere civilian when it comes to music, you may dismiss these as insignificant blips. Fine. Hardly insignificant is the entire plot about Tom's golden-boy discovery, a teenaged singer-songwriter whom he repeatedly describes as "the real thing," and whom he plans to craft his whole label around. We get lovingly filmed, faux-profound performances by this kid, Wayne Jensen, whose songs both work into the plot and act as a soundtrack to Tom's emotional journeys. Too bad the songs, actual songs by Teddy Geiger, the singer-songwriter-actor playing the role, SUCK. They are exactly the kind of overly-serious, touchy-feely, adult-contemporary travesties that sell millions of records and make real music fans cringe. In other words, they sound exactly like John Mayer. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if John Mayer sued these people.
Honestly, I'm struggling to even find anything to praise about the show. Past a criminally short cameo by Eric Bogosian, I'm hard-pressed. This is one of those times when actually writing down my thoughts on a show, I've come to realize just how bad it is.
"OK, so it's a male version of Sex and the City, but the plot is like High Fidelity meets Jerry Maguire." Which is a 100% accurate description, by the way.
--POSSIBLE PILOT SPOILER ALERT-- The show is about Tom (Ed's Tom Cavanaugh), a recently-fired record company A&R man attempting to figure out life and love in New York City. He has a quirky band of male friends, including the wasted Larenz Tate and the wasted-looking Jason Priestley. He has a wise/smartass best friend who could be a love interest, and he is attempting to parlay his sacking into a new, more morally clear career as the head of his own independent label.
Yawn. The writing is intermittently good, and there are a few funny moments in the pilot episode. But the material is stale, stale, stale. Worst of all, the actors know it, and it shows. Even Priestley looks a little worried, and you'd think he'd just be relieved to have a paying gig. The camaraderie of the guy friends is obviously modeled on the pack of professional New York women from Sex and the City, which is one thing, but the fact that their dialogue and behavior also seems wholly lifted is another thing entirely. Men don't really talk like this, and they're certainly not this outwardly supporting and kind. The dialogue makes some awkward nods to this fact, but most of the circle-of-friends business seems extremely unbelievable.
In one aspect in particular, Love Monkey really stinks: Tom is supposed to be The True Believer, a hip music geek with flawless taste who attempts to apply his earnest creative outlook to his A&R job. He's a guy who has racks upon racks of vinyl at his place, and gives Bob Dylan CDs as baby shower gifts. (Since he's also unlucky in love, he's basically an uninspired clone of the protagonist in High Fidelity.) The show makes a huge deal of this, costuming Tom in a porkpie hat and vintage rock tees, highlighting his attempt to launch his indie label, taking us inside CBGB's, and cutting in lots of ample performance scenes in small venues around the country.
So it's shocking that the writers and producers make so many obvious mistakes: In a big corporate meeting, Tom disses Hanson, calls them a "boy band," and equates them with Ashlee Simpson. Any halfway-serious music geek knows that Hanson write and perform all their own material, have produced several of their own albums, worked with hipster gods The Dust Brothers, and created "MMMBop," one of the most widely accepted half-ironic pop gems of the past few decades. Tom's Dylan gift is also all wrong: It's clearly shown to be The Essential Bob Dylan, part of CBS Records' mass-produced discount "Essential" series. It's basically a 2-CD greatest hits collection, and an uninspired one at that. Tom refers to it as containing "everything he ever recorded"--hardly--and as "less accessible" than a greatest hits CD, which is, in fact, exactly what it is. A real music hipster wouldn't be caught dead with an Essential collection, much less giving one as a gift.
But if, unlike me, you're a mere civilian when it comes to music, you may dismiss these as insignificant blips. Fine. Hardly insignificant is the entire plot about Tom's golden-boy discovery, a teenaged singer-songwriter whom he repeatedly describes as "the real thing," and whom he plans to craft his whole label around. We get lovingly filmed, faux-profound performances by this kid, Wayne Jensen, whose songs both work into the plot and act as a soundtrack to Tom's emotional journeys. Too bad the songs, actual songs by Teddy Geiger, the singer-songwriter-actor playing the role, SUCK. They are exactly the kind of overly-serious, touchy-feely, adult-contemporary travesties that sell millions of records and make real music fans cringe. In other words, they sound exactly like John Mayer. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if John Mayer sued these people.
Honestly, I'm struggling to even find anything to praise about the show. Past a criminally short cameo by Eric Bogosian, I'm hard-pressed. This is one of those times when actually writing down my thoughts on a show, I've come to realize just how bad it is.
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