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Whitney: “Pilot”

I heard so many horror stories about this TV show that I was actually surprised to find myself actually enjoying it. I am not going to pretend it is perfect. The laugh track was more than a little overused in the first episode and apart from an Anglo character's metrosexual Indian-American boyfriend, most of the characters were way too familiar from other sitcoms.

But Whitney Cummings herself -- who, of course, plays the title character -- was pretty likeable and so was Chris D'Elia, the actor who played her live-in boyfriend. If nothing else, it was more enjoyable than Workaholics -- for what little that is worth.

And it says something amusing about how far America has come from the time when a man and a woman living together without being married were considered to be doing something that was only done by shameless hippies and wild-eyed bohemians that the pilot episode's emphasis on equal rights for unmarried heterosexual couples was actually treated by some critics as being old hat.

Oh, well. The more things change...

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Workaholics: “P*ss & S**t”

A local librarian actually recommended the Workaholics show to me when I was checking out DVDs one day. And yet this series proved to be one of the most unfunny TV shows I have ever watched. And considering the wide variety of TV comedies that I have watched over the years, that is really saying something.

I guess that shows what I get for trusting the judgment of a stranger.

But seriously, folks...

The show in question is an alleged comedy about a bunch of telemarketers who share an apartment and take turns indulging in various antisocial activities. As you might guess, a lot of the comedy comes from their indulgence in various illicit drugs. And as you might also guess, the first episode involves their attempt to pass a drug test which they have no chance of passing on an honest basis.

I wish I could say that there were enough funny moments to offset the rude humor. But I don't remember any. And while I am well aware of the fact that I am not exactly in this show's target audience, it would have been nice to remember at least one thing in this episode worth smiling about. I realize that there is a lot worth satirizing in this country's approach to drugs but alas, that still does not make this episode worth watching. And the sexism displayed in this show's negative portrayal of the guys' female bosses only adds an icky icing to an already questionably flavored cake.

Oh, well. As I said above, they did not exactly make this show for guys like me. And I for one would like to think that's a good thing.

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Shameless (U.S.): “Pilot”

The first time I saw this show, I was tempted to dismiss it as a cartoonish attempt to copy the success of its British namesake. Granted, you don't see a lot of shows about poor urban whites on American TV and even less on American cable but there was a certain air about this series that made me wonder how many of its writers spent any time around real-life poor people.

It did not help that William H. Macy's efforts to emulate the dysfunctional patriarch of the original series seemed a bit off. The attempt to copy the original's introduction did not work at all and it was no surprise when the second episode went with a more visual intro. Granted, the intro still seemed a bit off but at least it was off in an original way.

In any event, I recently changed my mind about the series when I found out that a friend of mine was a big fan of the show. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that she herself has been poor and was once forced to live in her car for an extended period of time but for some reason, I found her take on this series more credible than the usual rave review from white middle class TV critics.

To be fair, there was something fascinating about the writers' approach to the material even before I found out about my friend's love for the show. The events depicted on this series are never quite as realistic as the equivalent events on the original series but they push the envelope in a way that is quite breathtaking even by American cable standards and they often cover issues that other shows just won't deal with. Plus it is hard for me to condemn one of the few American shows that does not glamorize alcoholism and other forms of addiction at a time when it is becoming more and more fashionable to romanticize such habits. Most such addictions do involve pain relief but unfortunately, such relief tends to all too often come at the expense of others, a fact often overlooked whenever a rich and famous celebrity dies of a overdose or a bad liver.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll have more to say about this series before it is through. And not just because I wish to please my friend.

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Red Dwarf: “Tikka to Ride”

Given much of the hypocritical rhetoric that has surrounded John F. Kennedy in recent years -- what with conservatives who would have hated his guts crying crocodile tears over his death and liberals who would have denounced many of JFK's policies pretending that he was a kindred spirit -- it would be nice to think that this one episode -- one of the few episodes in any science-fiction show, British or otherwise, to reference the JFK assassination -- was a refreshing piece of satire. But it is not.

Instead, it seems like one long and unfunny exercise in bad taste. Granted, the show Red Dwarf was not above employing a lot of dark humor prior to this episode. Nor did I ever object to such humor in the past. Morever, I hardly expect British writers to show the same reverence for the Kennedy Administration that most Americans of my generation do. Then again I hardly expected the show's writers to come up with a plot as awful as this episode's either.

Anyway, this episode involves protagonist Dave Lister going back in time to 1963 Dallas in order to get supplies for a good curry, only to find him and his companions inadvertently preventing the Kennedy assassination by accidentally killing would-be JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. When they return to the future, they discover that the world has been conquered by the Soviet Union as a result of Kennedy's having survived his infamous trip to Dallas. In order to change things back to the way they were originally, Lister and his pals track down the real John F. Kennedy and convince him to assassinate himself in 1963 Dallas. Along the way, Kennedy asks Lister if he will be remembered as a good man and Lister assures him that he will. Unfortunately, all that would have been a bit more convincing if Lister had not just convinced said good man to martyr himself in order to correct Lister's mistake.

I normally like Red Dwarf and this episode marked the first time that I really found myself hating the series. Not because I hate dark humor or because I consider JFK to be some sacred cow who can't be approached in a less than serious fashion but because the show's writing just did not seem to up to par and the writers' attempt to have things both ways -- playing the JFK assassination for laughes while at the same time pandering to Kennedy worshippers on both sides of the Atlantic -- really did not work. Perhaps if the writers had taken a cue from Terry Gilliam's Brazil and used this episode as a way to satirize human foibles in general, it might have worked. Then again, since the writers never quite made a convincing case that Kennedy's surviving Dallas would have been a disaster, maybe it would not.

All I know is that this episode did not work for me. And not just because my parents voted for Kennedy.

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2 Broke Girls: “Pilot”

Oy, vey! Boy, is this an awful series. I know that star Kat Dennings is cute and that she is supposed to be the hottest thing since sliced bread, but even she can't save this show from being close to unwatchable.

The whole show revolves around two girls who end up working together as waitresses in a small Asian-owned restaurant. One girl grew up poor and is barely getting by; the other grew up rich but just recently became acquainted with poverty when her father got arrested for stealing money from his wealthy clients in a Bernie Madoff-style deal.

No doubt the show has plenty of opportunity for both jokes and social commentary but thus far it relies on jokes. Bad jokes. Really bad jokes. The type of bad jokes that even comics who specialize in bad jokes hesitate to tell. (For example, the first episode features a rape joke told by one of the show's main characters -- a joke which is not less awful because it was told by a female.) And don't get me started on the show's ethnic stereotypes -- though I suppose I should be glad that this is one of the TV sitcoms set in a restaurant which does not feature a Latino stereotype as a regular character.

I would like to pretend that this show gets better by the end of the first season but thus far I have yet to make it to the end of the show's first season. On the plus side, though, I have a hard time seeing how even this show's writers can top the first episode for awfulness. However, I sincerely hope that they don't try.

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Night Gallery: “A Matter of Semantics”

At long last it's Cuban-American actor Cesar Romero in the role he was born to play.

Then again he was pretty good when he played the Joker on TV's Batman.

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Creature Comforts: “The Circus”

On paper, this show's concept must have seemed funny: put real people's voices in the mouths of animated animals and see how funny even the most banal sentiments become.

Unfortunately, the concept grows old very quickly and proves little more than the fact that even something as funny as talking animals can become unfunny in the wrong hands.

The sad part is that director Nick Park -- creator of the 2000 movie Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit shorts -- usually produces work that is far more entertaining. I am guessing that this show was produced in one of his more experimental phases.

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Masters of Horror: “Pro-Life”

Director John Carpenter dedicates an entire episode to the daringly controversial proposition that aborting a demon's child may not be the worst thing to do in this world.

Along the way, he also helps develop a key plot device for the recent horror movie The Purge.

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The Dick Van Dyke Show: “It May Look Like a Walnut”

This is one of the creepiest TV episodes I ever saw as a child. Indeed, as a child I found it to be way creepier because I was too young to realize how much of it was supposed to be a joke.

If nothing else, it is worth seeing just to see actor Danny Thomas dressed up like John Steed in 1963 -- long before most people in America ever heard of The Avengers.

Plus actress Mary Tyler Moore (who plays Laurie Petrie) gets to have one of the most memorable entrances that any TV character has ever had. You'll know it when you see it.

As for the actual plot... Rob and Laurie Petrie stay up and watch a bad horror movie about a race of alien invaders obsessed with walnuts. The obsession proves contagious -- even with people who did not see the same movie. Is it all a joke? Or something far more sinister...

The episode was made so long ago that its writers still considered it a novelty to reference the then-popular anthology series The Twilight Zone. Indeed, part of the fun of this episode lies in seeing how often they reference that show without actually referring to it by name.

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The Wild Wild West: “The Night of the Inferno”

The Wild Wild West used to be one of my favorite shows in high school thanks to syndicated black-and-white reruns that used to be broadcast every weekend on a late night program called Night Moves. (And yes, that program used the Bob Seger song of the same name as its theme.) Eventually I got the chance to watch the series all the way through and my enthusiasm diminished but I still have fond memories of the show's earliest episodes.

However, this episode -- the first of the series -- was not one of those episodes.

The episode begins with U.S. Secret Service agent James West (played by Robert Conrad) getting arrested on a charge of desertion, only to find out that it was a setup ordered by President Ulysses S. Grant himself. His mission: travel to the American Southwest in order to track down a dangerous Mexican revolutionary named Juan Manolo. Along the way, he runs into his partner Artemus Gordon (played by Ross Martin) as well as King Tut (aka Victor Buono) and Bob Newhart's wife (aka Suzanne Pleshette).

This episode is shamelessly politically incorrect by today's standards but it is difficult to think of any spy show this side of the Atlantic that was not. Besides, it is not likely that even the most liberal writers of the era would have found a way to make a Mexican revolutionary sympathetic to a predominantly Anglo-American audience -- though after seeing West comment on the size of a Chinese individual, one has to wonder just how ignorant of other ethnic groups this episode's writers presumed its white viewers to be to think that they would find this unusual.

Oh, well. At the very least, the episode gives today's viewers an interesting look at the way TV writers thought back in 1965 (the date of this episode's initial airing). And hope that today's TV writers might have learned better since then.

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Lost in Space: “The Great Vegetable Rebellion”

Lost in Space was the first science fiction TV show I ever got obsessed with as a kid and I especially remember being obsessed with the third season of the series. In retrospect, it is hard to see why. Unlike the first season, the third season rarely tried to tell a serious story and at times the writers seemed to be having a contest to see which one of them could come up with the most outlandish story premise.

To be fair, it did have a cool opening theme composed by one Johnny Williams (a pseudonym employed by a composer who would one day be better known to sci-fi buffs under the name of John Williams). But even a cool theme can go so far without some other reason to watch the show associated with it. Thus, Lost in Space eventually became unwatchable to anyone above the age of fifteen -- and once Star Trek came along, its popularity among young sci-fi fans got eclipsed altogether. At best, the later seasons of Lost in Space are comparable to the campy 1960s hit Batman, which at that time was Lost in Space's most serious rival for ratings -- and eventually the strongest influence upon the show itself.

Of all the episodes of the infamous third season, "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" was undoubtedly the most memorable. Not that it was a particularly good episode. But it still lingers in the memory despite the viewing of many better TV shows.

The episode begins when Dr. Zachary Smith (played by Jonathan Harris) commandeers a space pod from the Jupiter 2 (the Robinson family's spaceship) to gather flowers on a nearby planet. Said planet turns out to be ruled by plants, the toughest and most aggressive of which is a giant carrot named Tybo (played by Stanley Adams). Tybo threatens to execute Dr. Smith in exchange for the plants Dr. Smith killed when he was picking flowers but Tybo soon changes his mind and comes up with a more humiliating fate.

Meanwhile, the Robinson family -- led by Professor John Robinson (played by former Disney Zorro Guy Williams) and his wife Maureen (played by former Lassie matriarch June Lockhart) -- choose to land on the planet and go after Dr. Smith, only to find their path hampered by vines that seem to be alive. They also run into a ridiculous lettuce monster and eventually find themselves captured and imprisoned by Tybo. The youngest child -- Will Robinson (played by Billy Mumy) -- manages to escape capture along with the family's pet robot and the two of them eventually discover Dr. Smith in the process of being turned into a celery plant. John Robinson manages to turn the tables on Tybo by sabotaging the pump from which Tybo gets his water supply and pretty soon the Robinsons and Dr. Smith are on their way back to the ship.

As far as writing goes, the script screenwriter Peter Packer wrote for this episode was filled with almost every bad plant joke you could think of. The script seems even worse from an adult perspective because of the obvious hypocrisy of the Robinson family that goes uncommented on. Instead of being fascinated by the idea of a planet where the plants were as intelligent as people, John Robinson -- who, after all, was a scientist -- seemed impatient with the whole concept. Granted, he had other things on his mind at the time but it still seemed odd that neither he nor the more sensitive members of the group didn't even try to use anything more merciful than machetes to make their way through the alien plant life. And while one could hardly expect them to be overjoyed about having been netted and captured by a giant carrot, it still seemed a tad awkward to see John Robinson -- of all people -- lecturing Tybo on the virtues of mercy after choosing to restore to Tybo the very water supply that Robinson had sabotaged in the first place. (And let's not forget about those machetes.)

To be fair, this episode was written before the ecology movement was popular and it became fashionable to care that much about plants unless you were a florist, a farmer or a gardener. Moreover, the show's writers tended to be overly fond of the evil alien trope, usually dismissing the idea that the alien might have a valid point-of-view unless it was needed for a rare plot twist. It would not be until the success of Star Trek that things would change in this department.

In any event, Stanley Adams still deserves credit for being a good sport just on the basis of his costume alone. And it's nice to see that Johnny -- er -- John Williams' career wasn't permanently marred by association with this show.

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Mockingbird Lane: “Pilot”

I did not think it was possible, but the new Munsters reboot that goes by the name of Mockingbird Lane actually proved to be more watchable than I had imagined it would be when I first heard about the project. Of course, time will tell whether it will make a successful series as well -- especially since it seems more interested in catering to the type of people who watch cable shows like Dexter and True Blood and less to the hardcore fans of the original Munsters.

However, unlike the recent Night Stalker reboot that debuted a few years back, this show appears to have been made by people who have a healthy affection for the original series. True, they can't resist teasing the TV audience by, say, showing us a brief glimpse of an image that looked like a silhouette of the original Herman Munster's head, but for the most part, the show's producers show more respect for the original show than I expected.

Of course, they did a bit of updating the show as well. The current Herman and Lily Munster look more like normal human beings than the originals and even their son Eddie (played by Mason Cook) looks more like an average kid than the original Eddie Munster. Portia de Rossi's Lily has easily one of the most memorable character entrances I've seen on any TV show in a long while -- apparently episode writer Bryan Fuller is not shy about having the Munsters do things on this show that the TV censors of the 1960s would have never allowed on the original series -- and Jerry O'Connell makes for a likable -- if seemingly unlikely -- Herman Munster, who is a lot more physically affectionate with his wife than the original ever had the opportunity to be.

The new Marilyn (played by Charity Wakefield) seems a lot more odder than the original Marilyn Munster -- almost as if the writers were trying to compensate for the lack of ghoulish makeup in the rest of the cast. She whistles at ravens and shows no qualms about making a bid on a house once owned by a serial killer. For that matter, the new Grandpa (played by Eddie Izzard) is a lot more aggressive about his vampirism, at one point actually devouring a wild beast before the eyes of his own grandson.

However, the main difference between the new Munsters and the old is that the old Munsters made little if any effort to assimilate with the rest of the world. As far as they were concerned, they were the normal ones, and it was outsiders who looked like Marilyn who were deserving of pity. The new Munsters are more obsessed with appearance's sake. For example, when they find out that Eddie is a werewolf, they seem more worried about how it would look to the neighbors than about the more obvious downside of having a lycanthropic son. Only Grandpa doesn't worry about fitting in but then Grandpa is hardly an apt role model for any generation. Why his behavior doesn't have a legion of Van Helsing wannabes pursuing him is a question the episode never quite answers.

In any event, I can't help hoping that Mockingbird Lane will indeed become a series, if only to answer all the questions the pilot episode conjures up. And while my inner teenager can probably go on and on about Lily Munster's big entrance, I must confess that the one part of the show that really excited my inner Munsters geek -- a part of me that I had presumed dead for years, if not decades -- was the entrance of a very special Munsters character in the episode's last five minutes.

Apparently Mockingbird Lane creator/producer/writer Bryan Fuller really is a fan of the original series. Either that or he knows us Munster geeks better than we know ourselves.

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Night Gallery: “Pickman's Model”

Well, you know how it is. You think you're going to have a nice quiet evening at home and then company drops by unexpectedly. Not just any company but that crazy girl you met in art class who seemed to be flirting with you earlier in the day. No sooner than you realize this but you get a second shock. It turns out that some of your no-account kinfolk have taken it upon themselves to drop by as well and you just know that if they ever meet your lady visitor, things will turn out badly for everyone. For you in particular.

Of course, a lot more than this happens in the Night Gallery episode entitled “Pickman's Model” and yet that above paragraph sums up the whole episode better than anything else I can think of. It certainly can't be summed up by the H. P. Lovecraft short story of the same name. As much as I would like to bla -- er -- give credit to the late Mr. Lovecraft for this episode, it owes a lot more to screenwriter Alvin Sapinsley's invention than to Lovecraft's work. And perhaps that's a good thing. Rest assured that Lovecraft had no room for romances in his version of the Pickman story -- he barely had room for plot and character. And yet this episode managed to be memorable despite all that.

Of course, the first time I saw this episode, I was still in grade school -- and thus easily impressed by tales of ghosts, ghouls and monsters. Despite what Rod Serling once said in an interview, I did not tune into Night Gallery expecting Mannix in a shroud -- or even Peyton Place in a crypt. In fact, it was my late father who originally introduced me to the show -- and what he saw in it, I'll never know. Then again, he was a big fan of the original Twilight Zone and it was his influence, no doubt, that got me hooked on the work of Rod Serling to begin with. And through Rod Serling, I eventually got introduced to the work of other writers such as Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Manley Wade Wellman and eventually... H. P. Lovecraft.

In any event, when I first discovered Night Gallery, I was still into late night creature features so I tended to like the scary episodes (which were rarely written by Mr. Serling) far more than the intellectual think-pieces (which were more often than not Mr. Serling's work) -- and of course, “Pickman's Model” was one of my favorites. It didn't hurt that when I first saw this episode, it seemed a lot more scary to me than it does today. I was not yet burnt out on umpteen hundred horror movies and horror shows. Nor was I was so blase that I automatically looked for the zipper on the back of the poor monster's suit. The revelation concerning actor Bradford Dillman's Richard Upton Pickman character--an eccentric artist prone to painting weird and morbid subjects -- seemed a lot more surprising to my young eyes than it probably would be to today's pre-teen viewers. And of course, the twist ending seemed a lot more ominous to my young self -- ominous enough to make for quite a few sleepless nights.

And yet even today I still continue to be fascinated by those aspects of the Pickman story which the screenwriter did not explain. Why exactly did an unmarried artist like Pickman live in a big old house by himself? What did the poor guy do on Mother's Day? For that matter, what did he do on Father's Day? If he hated human company so much, why was he hanging around them so much? Why didn't he just give up his residence and move in with his relatives?

Alas, none of these questions will ever be answered and I wonder if I might not be the only viewer of this episode who really cares. I am especially appalled that screenwriter Alvin Sapinsley chose to end the episode with hints about Pickman's mysterious disappearance because it would have been more interesting if the episode had had a less conventional ending.

Perhaps Miss Goldsmith (Pickman's would-be love interest) could have persuaded Pickman to paint more commercial subjects like, say, soup cans. True, her family and his might have had a few conflicts when she and Pickman became a couple, but on the other hand, true love has survived more daunting obstacles. Besides, Louise Sorel -- the actress who played Miss Goldsmith -- was so sweet that she probably could have charmed the dead right out of their graves. And surely Pickman's kinfolk would have had no problem with that.

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Dexter: “Those Kinds of Things”

At long last the truth about Dexter Morgan is out! He's an atheist. Not that most of us didn't see that coming. But it is interesting to see yet another admitted atheist on the air now that House M.D. has finished its final season.

That said...

A former cast member of The George Lopez Show -- i.e. Aimee Garcia -- is joining the show to play Angel Batista's little sister Jamie -- and Dexter's nanny. (Apparently there is some law in Hollywood that almost every TV show has to have at least one nanny played by a Hispanic actress--perhaps because having a nanny played by Scarlett Johansson would be too unrealistic.)

Lt. LaGuerta is finally getting a promotion, but alas, she did not exactly secure it through honorable means. For shame!

On the plus side, Vince Masuka is actually acquiring some interns this season -- and some smarts to go along with them. However, one of the interns might not be what she seems...

Anyway, in this week's episode, Dexter Morgan goes to his high school reunion in order to avenge a woman who had been nice to him back in high school -- and finds himself to be surprisingly popular. No, that last part was not meant to be a meta-comment on the show's popularity -- though it is tempting to take it that way.

In addition, his sister Debra stops an armed man wearing body armor from shooting up a crowded restaurant. And no, I did not make up that last part. And given that this episode first aired last year, it can't be blamed on recent events.

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ER: “24 Hours (Pilot)”

The oddest thing I noticed about the first episode of the long-running medical series ER?

How young George Clooney looked in the first season.

Granted, he was hardly the first actor to age in a certain role but I've gotten so used to seeing him in older roles that it is shocking to see how young he was when he first started out. It didn't help that he spent the entire first season wearing weird blonde highlights in his hair that lowered his age to the point that he seemed to be auditioning for a reboot of Doogie Howser, M.D.. Of course, once the second season started, he stopped wearing highlights and allowed his hair to take on a more natural color but for a while there, I had to wonder how it was that Clooney's character Doug Ross managed to look younger than almost every other adult male character including Noah Wyle's John Carter character -- who, of course, was an intern.

In any event, the initial episode of the series focused more on Dr. Mark Greene -- the Anthony Edwards character -- than on either Ross or Carter. Apparently, the show was set in a fictional inner-city Chicago hospital and its main purpose was to give the American TV-viewing public some idea of what it was like to be a doctor or a nurse in such a hospital. Of course, as time went by, the show would grow more and more melodramatic to the point that it seemed light-years away from its original intention -- and I'm sure that its having to compete with newer medical shows like Grey's Anatomy and House M.D. didn't help matters.

Just the same, the first episode managed to straddle a believable line between fiction and reality in that the average viewer could actually picture the events of said episode occurring in an actual hospital. The same, unfortunately, could not be said of more recent episodes.

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Castle: “Always Buy Retail”

I'm still not as much a fan of this show as most people on the Net seem to be but I'm beginning to understand why it has such a big following. Indeed, I could swear my mother's calendar had a notation for the premiere episode for the most recent season -- and my mother has not publicly admitted to being a fan of this show.

If anything else, I wish I had more money in my pocket right now because this episode really makes me want to own a flak jacket with the word “writer” on it in place of “police.” Not that I expect to ever have to use it -- especially since I'm unpublished. But, hey. You never know.

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Modern Family: “Game Changer”

Oh, cool. A TV episode which is also an infomercial for iPads. And when the writers of this episode can spare the time, there are also a few good jokes.

Seriously, this episode would be a lot more exasperating if it did not make fun of early adopters as often as it did late adopters. Besides, as I have noted before, I'm really beginning to warm up to the characters to the point that I'm not sure what I'll do for an entertainment fix if this show ever goes off the air. I mean, it's bad enough that they took away Buffy, Ugly Betty and Veronica Mars. Worse yet that the powers that be are fixing to put an end to Desperate Housewives and House M.D.. I don't know what I'll do if this show bites the dust as well.

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Community: “Regional Holiday Music”

Here we are in February and I finally have discovered the most memorable Christmas special of last year: Community's 2011 holiday episode. Adding to the fun of the episode was a splendid parody of Glee, an even more splendid parody of "Santa Baby" and a classic parody of Doctor Who. And oh, yeah, I hear Community is a fun sitcom about a community college even when its writers aren't parodying things. Who ever thought that actor Chevy Chase would ever be on a funny TV show again?

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Modern Family: “The Incident"

Actress Shelley Long of Cheers fame is now not only old enough to play a mother but also a grandmother. Now I really do feel old.

On the plus side, Modern Family has turned out to be one of the smarter and funnier sitcoms on primetime American TV. So that's a good thing.

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Bored to Death: “Pilot”

There was a time a few years ago when I probably would have appreciated this show more. Then again when I consider some of the more stupid stuff that I enjoyed watching when I was younger, I don't necessarily consider that a good thing.

Besides, there are TV shows that have done the old "P.I. who's not really a P.I." thing a whole lot better than this particular show. Perhaps it's because I've gotten tired of the old "hipster who is too hip to avoid making a mess of his love life" routine but this show got really old really fast -- so much so that I found it hard to root for the hero to get back together with his obligatory love interest. Granted, a show with this kind of title can't be accused of false advertising but I wasn't exactly surprised to find out that it has been recently cancelled. It was only a matter of time...