“My Boys” — The Promise of a New Season + Off Day
Oh my God, this show is fair to good!
My Boys is one of those shows I’m surprised I enjoy watching as much as I do. It has a lot of problems, not the least of which being a narration track loaded with not-particularly insightful baseball metaphors and reeks of Carrie Bradshaw. There’s also the “female friend” of our tomboy lead P.J. who never once presents a legitimate reason as to why the two are friends. There’s also the general problem of a show about a bunch of friends who all go to the same bar every night and trying to make that idea seem new. And yet I watch it and I like it. More after the jump…
The guy friends (as well as our lead) are all incredibly charming and funny and for the most part a blast to watch. My Boys is the type of series where the B-story is always far more interesting and funny than the A-story. Take for example Monday’s second episode, “Off Day.” In it P.J. was given the opportunity to be a guest on a PTI-esque sports show (she’s a baseball writer for the Sun-Times… or so we’re led to believe), and bombs horribly. OK. Fine. Pleasant enough. The B-Story, however was about Jim Gaffigan’s character Andy who lives in Naperville and wants to be able to stay over at their friend Mike’s place after playing cards. The problem is Mike’s apartment is furnished solely with a leather recliner and a sixty-inch plasma. The rest of the episode involves the two shopping for a bed. A big bed. The “Grand Canyon.” The whole storyline took up maybe five minutes of screen time but was easily the most rewarding part of the show (at least in terms of laughs — it also reminded me of high school when I used to go over to a friends house and lay on their parents unbelievably comfortable king-sized bed. It was like laying on an enormous sponge cake!).
It’ll be interesting to see what kind of schedule My Boys ultimately finds itself in airing. When the series premiered last December TBS ended up showing the entire 12 episode run in about two weeks making it nearly impossible to keep up (there isn’t a lot of television going on in December, but still the season seemed rushed). Last night two episodes were shown and I suspect this will be the case for the next few weeks. If they keep this up, the season could be over by September, which personally, is great for my schedule. If they ultimately scale back to one a week, I fear that My Boys could easily get lost in the onslaught of new programming in the coming months. For now, as the summer heat and humidity wail away on us like a sweaty, invisible midget ridding piggy-back, it’s a decent way to spend 20 minutes in front of the television.
