Mid-Century Modern

• I'M NOT GIVING ANY STORYLINES OR SPOILERS AWAY

• I'm pretty tough on sitcoms and had high hopes for this. You could very easily end up having a different opinion than I.

Mid-Century Modern is an upcoming sitcom written by Max Mutchnick and David Kohan who were the co-creators of Will & Grace. This is produced by Ryan Murphy and the episode was directed by James Burrows. It stars Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, Linda Lavin, and Nathan Lee Graham. It's basically about three gay men who decide to live together in Palm Springs after a close friend has passed and Linda Lavin rounds out the cast as Nathan's mother who also lives there. It's been compared to Golden Girls which is a pretty tough shadow to cast over a new television show so I try to not have that affect my opinion too much.

They showed us the pilot on the screen and then we saw them tape the third episode. I have to say as a whole, this show just does not deliver very well. It's average at best and sometimes it's not even that.

When a sitcom is a hit, and everything just works, it can make it look very easy to do. But in actuality it is very difficult. When I look at all of the aspects that can make a great television show, like writing, acting, tone, pacing, casting, chemistry, etc, most great sitcoms have at least 8/10 or 9/10 in most of those categories. Mid-Century Modern has 6 or 7/10's in most categories and in some, a 5/10.

First off the writing is unfocused. The tone is all over the place and the show cannot decide if it's a raunchy sitcom or a show with heart, or both. Will & Grace knew what kind of show it was even early on. That's not to mean that they didn't need to adjust things but they had a general tone even at the beginning that was pretty spot on. Most of the humor and the jokes worked because the tone was something that the audience could follow and focus on.

This episode was written by Max and David and then most likely handed off to their staff of writers to probably only make minor tweaks to the story but to mostly punch up the jokes. And because of that the script did feel like it was written by a whole bunch of different people. You could see the staff of writers on hand at the taping and they had some great ones including Dan Bukatinsky who's definitely worked with them before, Lena Waithe from Master of None among other things. Kate Flannery (Meredith from the Office) was also spotted down by the writers. I'm not sure if she's on their writing staff or was just there hanging out with friends she knew or something. Regardless of who wrote it, it just didn't flow and some of the punch lines you definitely could feel came from Will & Grace and then a lot of them were just really bad I'm sorry but just really hacky bad jokes. They were doing a LOT of rewrites on the side basically every scene. The audience was lukewarm at best and I think they could figure that out because the jokes just were not landing.

As a side note I have seen lots and lots of sitcoms taped. I've been in the audience, I've worked background, I've been a stand-in, so I feel that I do have a fairly good opinion about how these usually go and this seemed to have a lot more rewrites than any other show that I've seen taped live.

Although they have a great cast of actors, and they are all talented individually, I'm sorry they just did not have any chemistry together. Three of them are supposed to be best friends and I do realize this is only the third episode of the show but they had absolutely no chemistry it just felt like these characters met the night before at a train station or something and are pretending to be best friends now. Other shows like Will and Grace or Golden Girls or the Office or Friends had great chemistry right from the get-go. This show did not have that.

Obviously a lot of the pressure of the show to be successful is going to rest on Nathan Lane's shoulders since he is such a big star. He is a very talented actor and was trying his best with the material but it was clear that he really didn't have a well thought-out character to play. He was sort of just playing the straight man type or the the main character type but really didn't have any point of view if that makes sense. He certainly wasn't awful but most of it was not very noteworthy.

I noticed it more in a couple of the scenes of episode 3 while they were taping. I'm not going to say who it is but they had a guest star that is fairly common on other sitcoms and immediately Nathan had much better chemistry with this actor and character than he seemed to have with the other main characters of the show. When he was in scenes with this person, all of a sudden the delivery and the focus was more clear and he was getting bigger returns on his jokes. You could definitely tell when he knew that it wasn't working but he would just try his best to plod along and try to find moments and jokes that worked.

Matt Bomer plays a simpler character let's say. He has been compared to Rose from Golden Girls with this part. Matt Bomer is great and he does pretty well with this. It's not a hole in one, it's not a situation where you point at the screen and say yes! But not terrible either. It's fairly believable that he would be this dim although I'm not sure that's really Matt's strongest type of role to play,but it works enough.

Nathan Lee Graham plays the type of character he usually plays, a fierce, sassy queen. Not bad and definitely one of the better worked out characters of the show but still kind of one-dimensional. Hopefully they will be able to give him a little bit more depth in more episodes to come.

And Linda plays Nathan Lane's mother in this. I love Linda but she just sort of sits there. It's nothing you haven't seen, it's nothing particularly noteworthy, and it's only partially funny. She gets some funny lines but she's not really playing any character that's memorable at all.

Something else I noticed that kind of surprised me is how often the actors were thrown when the audience would laugh. I've never noticed that being this prominent in any other sitcom that I have seen taped. Most of these actors have worked in multicams before with a live audience and have done theater so it shouldn't throw them every time the audience laughs. That tells me that during the week while they were rehearsing, the crew members were not laughing at all. Generally during the week crew members will at least chuckle when they're supposed to even if they don't think it's funny because it helps the actors learn where the jokes are probably going to land and where the laughs are going to be. But many many times during the taping someone had to stop and remind them to pause for the laughter but then the second time the laughter wouldn't be very big and it threw them even more. It was just an awkward situation all around.

These are all talented actors but they really again seem to have no chemistry and a lot of times not even a lot of conviction behind the lines. That can be because they were given rewrites at the last minute, but that can also be because they just don't have everything completely figured out and when you don't, it shows on the screen.

I think overall the writing is to blame as it usually is. Even though I'm an actor myself, I generally say that when a show works, it's because of the writing and when a show doesn't work, it's because of the writing. Obviously the acting is important as well but if you don't have good writing as a foundation there's not much you can do about it.

Now more casual viewers of television may enjoy this show just fine. Like I said I am pretty tough on sitcoms so someone else could very easily watch this and enjoy it! Everybody has a different opinion so this is just mine.

In short it felt quality-wise like something close to the Will & Grace reboot. Some of it worked, some of it didn't, but mostly it just felt...off.

The first season is going to be 10 episodes which will air on Hulu at some point to be determined. I have a feeling they will probably get a second season pickup and then we'll be canceled during the second season unless the quality greatly increases. We shall see.