Monday, September 27, 2010

Pilot Review: Outsourced

Outsourced (NBC)
Premiered September 23rd at 9:30pm

I expected this show to be offensive. In fact, The Telefile has compiled a list of the 8 Most Racist Jokes from the pilot. What I didn't expect, however, was for this show to be the most boring half-hour of television I've watched in a long time. It's likely that transplanted office manager Todd will be bored to death in his new job, but that doesn't mean the viewers of this show should be as well. I tried my hardest to give this show a fair shot, but it didn't present anything worthwhile in its defense. In fact, the tasteless, offensive moments were the only interesting parts of the whole show! I couldn't possibly cite back to you the names of any of the characters on the show, and that's not because, as the show would stupidly have you believe, they're not American names. It's due to the fact that there's not one compelling character on this entire series. NBC used to premiere at least two new shows every season in between their Thursday night Must See TV stalwarts, and this seems like it has to follow in the trend of dying a quick death that shows like "Coupling" established. That's actually nothing else to say: this show is an embarassment on many levels and shouldn't really be watched by anyone. I certainly couldn't stomach any more of it.

How will it work as a series? Hopefully we won't have to find out. There's plenty of insensitivity left for Todd to dish out to his unenthusiastic employees, and for anyone who enjoys that kind of thing, this show could be somewhat interesting; for anyone else, the rest of the show should just be more of the tasteless same.
How long will it last? Mystifyingly, this show was watched by more people than those who watched "30 Rock" and fan favorite "Community," likely due to the fact that NBC now incessantly counts down the minutes until the next program during its shows. Still, NBC can't possibly hold on to this stupid show for long, and I imagine it will be replaced by some midseason entry by 2011, if it lasts that long.

F-

2 comments:

Andrew K. said...

F-? Apparently it IS possible.

Greg Boyd said...

Oh, I seem to recall at least two other F- grades on this blog: recently for "Raising Hope" (way too harsh considering it's actually pretty good) and that "Spartacus" show (which I don't know about).

For me, A+ and F- are theoretical grades. An A+ denotes absolute perfection, which will never happen. And F- denotes a show (or movie) with nothing at all to offer, which also will never happen. I can alwasy find one tiny bit of inspired camerawork or one good line to bump the grade up to an F. Anyway, that's my take.