The Bottom Line
Details
- Stars David Hornsby, Kevin Dillon, Dave Foley, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Rhys Darby, Nancy Lenehan
- Created by David Hornsby
- Premiere airs September 29, 2011, at 8:30 p.m. EST on CBS
Review
Hornsby plays Andrew Carlson, an urbane columnist for a men’s magazine who fancies himself the last bastion of gentlemanly behavior. When his magazine gets bought out by a company looking to appeal to a younger, less cultured audience, Andrew is forced to switch up his approach and write about more uncouth, “manly” subjects. Enter Bert Lansing (Kevin Dillon of Entourage), a meathead who used to beat up Andrew in high school and now owns his own gym. Bert offers to teach Andrew how to be more of an assertive man, while Andrew hopes to teach Bert a little about, well, how to be a gentleman. It’s a basic mismatched-buddies setup, but unlike the title characters on 2 Broke Girls, Andrew and Bert don’t ever seem like they genuinely connect, nor do they come off as real people beyond their stereotypical attributes.
Hornsby’s dry, meek presence worked well on Sunny as a counterpoint to the depraved lead characters, but here he’s pretty much overpowered by Dillon’s mook act, basically the same character Dillon plays on Entourage, only dumbed down a little more. Dillon is the only main cast member here who doesn’t have a background as a creative, subversive comedy talent, and his one-note performance consistently overwhelms the show. Hornsby gives Bert the most obvious, lowbrow jokes, and Dillon delivers them with a complete lack of subtlety, just throwing every line out there in the same semi-sarcastic tone of voice.
Not that the rest of the cast escapes blame. Dillon may drag things down, but Foley (as Andrew’s sycophantic boss) and Rajskub (as Andrew’s acerbic sister) bring none of their distinctive talents to their roles, although Hornsby gives them little to start out with. Darby is the only one whose peculiar, entertaining sensibilities actually come through here. Darby’s Mike, who’s married to Andrew’s sister, has a sort of amusingly clueless way of looking at life, similar to Darby’s Conchords role as band manager Murray but with enough new twists (Darby manages to find a refreshing way to play the henpecked husband) to not feel like a retread. If the show were able to loosen up and allow all of the main performers to be similarly distinctive, it could end up one of the most amusing comedies on TV. Instead it’s the Kevin Dillon dude hour, with occasional offbeat jokes in the margins, and that seems like such a waste.
