Players (S01E01)

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Players (S01E01)

Friday, March 05, 2010

If anyone could make a sports bar sitcom bearable, it'd be Matt Walsh and Ian Roberts. Those two guys could make a movie about the extinction of dinosaurs and it'd be funny, AND prove that Sarah Palin is right about dinos and dudes buddying up.

Reviewer
Kaitis
Categories
TV Shows

Reviewed by Michael Kaitis

Players (S01E01) - "Krista's Mom"

When we're not off doing side missions with Adair, here at WRS we're pretty big fans of the Upright Citizens Brigade. Last year you could find 3/4ths of them on season 6 of Reno 911, but since the tragic cancellation my only real Upright Citizen fix has been Amy Poehler on Parks and Rec. Luckily Spike picked up this show Matt Walsh created, and that alone gives me high hopes. Sticking with the UCB philosophy they based the show on loose plot lines, and decided to go with improv heavy scenes.

The Sports Bar location is so typical looking, you can swear you've eaten there, but the show itself feels more like a sitcom than I would've expected from these comedians. The main plot this episode revolves around Krista, a waitress lying to her Mom about being a manager there. The actual manager, Ian Roberts, agrees to go along with it for a day. It then goes into a somewhat corny escalation of her mother deciding to stay a whole week, and then into her needing someone to pretend to be her fiancee. Oh, and she picks Roberts' character to do it, who is uptight, hates the whole situation, and doesn't like her very much either.

While I though a lot of the plot was cheesy, I still very much liked the show. Roberts and Walsh have such good chemistry together, it's hard not to believe that they haven't grown up together, and after you see some awesome, classic snap-shots of the two in the intro you realize that they really have. This brings me to their strong point, which is good joke writing. They really utilized the situations that can come up in restaurants in fairly unique ways. Specifically when someone asks Walsh which of two food items is better, and even though I don't work in a restaurant, it still makes me cringe to hear people ask that question. Walsh's response of, "Cheesecake, because you and I have the same taste buds. You're gonna love it, cause I love it. Loooove Cheesecake." sums of my feelings perfectly.

The B-story with Paul Scheer was well thought out though, and had a kind of twisted but funny end. One thing I remember thinking was that the main waitress who plays Krista wasn't a good enough improviser to be on screen as much as she was (Ed. Note: Krista sucks.), but that will vary by episode hopefully. I did like to see that the other waitress was someone who I thought was funny from Flight of the Conchords season 1 and Year One. Even though the show wasn't quite amazing, it was still a funny pilot. and had quite a few funny lines that stuck with me. With Matt Walsh and Ian Roberts together in one show, you really can't go wrong.

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