Truth to tell, in principle I don’t mind the idea of a series about dads being dads. But as a dood whose reaction to the sound of any baby crying is total panic the idea of watching this fills my body with dread.
Take Me To The Pilots ’12: NBC’s ‘Guys with Kids’ by Daniel Fienberg
The Pitch: “You know how sometimes babies have fathers? That’s pretty CRAZY, right?”
Quick Response: Oh dads. So biologically and evolutionarily unprepared to take even a partial interest in raising their children. I mean, put a person with man-parts together with a baby and that’s just an instant recipe for hilarity, right? I mean, you don’t even have to add water to watch the wackiness ensue. You can just add a little spit-up or some poop and the punchlines write themselves. Don’t they? Hmmm… The team behind “Guys with Kids” seems to be hoping that the punchlines will write themselves. It’s not that there aren’t a couple laughs in “Guys with Kids.” Anthony Anderson makes me chuckle occasionally. And there’s a cameo that was appealingly absurd. And… Yeah. I did laugh a couple times. That’s something. But it isn’t much and I cringed many more times. Anderson is easily the funniest of the core trio. Zach Cregger, who I vaguely remember from “Friends with Benefits” — you don’t want to have been in my brain when I was trying to go through my internal screener queue trying to place him — has comedic timing, but no real punchlines to work with.
Confession: I hope you click and read on, but I can’t make myself do it. The review so far, coupled with my natural anxiety has produced a 2 Xanax panic attack. I can – unfortunately – all too easily imagine what seeing this series would do to me. Aarghh!