I'm curious about your ...
Question: I'm curious about your thoughts on
Twenty Good Years. Both
John Lithgow and
Jeffrey Tambor are downright funny, and the commercials look good from what I've seen, but it seems to have been relegated to the back burner when it comes to critics. Is the show not as funny as it looks? Or is it just not going to need as much of a push as other comedies?
Answer: This is not a show that's likely to depend on critical support to survive. It's very broad and very conventional in its look and tone (laugh track included), but NBC feels that it might be populist enough to draw in a mainstream audience that could potentially stay tuned for
30 Rock (which, like many single-camera comedies, may grow slowly). NBC may be onto something: Put popular stars into a silly nothing of a show and you might attract a bigger crowd to stay tuned for the more offbeat, snob-appeal comedy that follows. Personally, I think it's just weird to pair
Twenty Good Years and
30 Rock, going from the ridiculously negligible to the sublime. I'd pair
30 Rock with
Scrubs, which is why I probably wouldn't last six months in a job like
Kevin Reilly's. (Months? Make that weeks.)
