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Twitter'Sit Down, Shut Up' review
Given the people involved in FOX's new animated comedy "Sit Down, Shut Up," it's a show I very much want to like. The show's first two episodes, however, make that kind of hard to do.
The show, about the barely qualified and otherwise preoccupied teachers at a Florida high school, is at times too silly and juvenile for its own good, and other times not big enough for an animated series. A handful of funny moments are outweighed by quite a few more that aren't.
Unreasonably high expectations may be partly to blame for my disappointment. "Sit Down, Shut Up" counts "Arrested Development" creator Mitch Hurwitz and long-time "Simpsons" writer-producer Josh Weinstein among its executive producers, and its cast includes "Arrested" alums Jason Bateman, Henry Winkler and Will Arnett, "Saturday Night Live" veterans Kenan Thompson, Will Forte and Cheri Oteri, along with Kristen Chenoweth, Nick Kroll and Tom Kenny (aka the voice of SpongeBob). With those folks involved, you'd figure it almost has to be funny, right?
Sadly, no. The first two episodes are only sporadically amusing, and the show seems a little unsure of its tone. On one hand, it features characters named Larry Littlejunk (Bateman), Miracle Grohe (Chenoweth), Ennis Hofftard (Arnett) and Willard Deutschebog (Winkler), so we're not exactly in high-brow territory here. There are lots of jokes about inappropriate sex, and a bit about Willard's predilection for both pornography and food magazines gets hammered into the ground in Sunday's (8:30 p.m. ET, between "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy") premiere.
Some other jokes, though, are a little too subtle for a cartoon. In live-action comedy, actors like Bateman and Forte can undersell a line verbally but still make it hilarious through their expression and body language. That obviously doesn't work in animation, so some lines that might otherwise get a laugh get lost. Thompson, who plays weary acting principal Sue Sezno, and Kenny, as janitor Muhannad Sabeeh "Happy" Fa-ach Nuabar (whose rantings are dubbed into PBS-like English narration in one of the show's better running bits), along with Arnett, who plays Ennis at full Gob Bluth levels, come off best in the voice cast.
The second episode, in which the teachers try to earn some money for their perpetually underfunded school at the annual carnival, is a little better than the premiere, but the ratio of misses to hits is still a little high. An ongoing subplot about Larry's inability to express his feelings for Miracle -- he's an empiricist, she's a New Age-y magical thinker (who's also the science teacher) -- doesn't have as much juice as it probably should.
It's entirely possible that "Sit Down, Shut Up" will continue its growth curve for the rest of its brief run this spring, finding the right mix of broad and more cerebral humor. But at the moment, it stands as a bit of a disappointment.
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"Family Guy" has set the bar very high.
How did Family Guy set the bar high? I like the show, but it's not that good. Basically throw a bunch of one line jokes that have nothing to do with the story and hope fans like it? Family Guy is very hit and miss, either a joke is funny or it's crap (there doesn't seem to be a middle ground with it).
I think "Family Guy" is gut busting funny, (my opinion) alot of animated shows have come and gone, The Critic, Fish Police, Capital Critters and alot of other crap. "Family Guy" was brought back from the dead for good reason.
The Critic had decent ratings, the reason Fox canceled it (ABC canceled it because they didn't want animated shows in their primetime lineup) is because the new president of the network didn't like it. Family Guy came at a time where there was a network that wanted to air the series (Cartoon Network) and DVDs were around. Had The Critic existed now I think it could have been saved the same way. The original run of Family Guy was great and full of good episodes, the revived run is meh.
Both Family Guys were good but the old ones were better!! I also have High Hopes for this show!!
Most animated series need a little time to grow. Hopefully this show will be allowed to.
To say that an animated character's facial expression or body language cannot communicate without benefit of words is ludicrous. Have you never seen the gold old Disney movies? Have you never laughed at Homer Simpson's face at a given moment? Did you somehow miss Wall-E? Maybe the animation style chosen for this show doesn't work in this way, but it's, well, ludicrous again to make such a blanket statement about an art form that is every bit as able as the real thing.
Surely They're not replacing "King of the Hills" with this crap. They're better writers on unemployment that came up with this nonsense.
Rupert Murdoch should take some decisive action and fire the whole lot of charlatans and bring back "Hank Hill". When you have gold, only a fool would throw it away.
This was just bad and perverted. Not credible and just simply too disturbing.
Do the right thing and give this series a dirt nap.
Sit Down and Shut Up was just plain stupid and insipid. I hope Fox changes their minds and keeps King of the Hill on the air.
I challenge one to watch the most recent episodes of King of the Hill and Sit Down and Shut Up, and I think they will agree which of the two is the superior show and should remain on the air and which should be canceled after one episode.
SD@SU is an abomination.
FOX is replacing the irreplaceble KOTH with this unfunny, unclever, unsubtle show? Larry Littlejunk? Miracle Grohe? Please. That's just dumb.
It hurts me, deep inside my heart, to realize the contempt that FOX writers have for their audience. FOX will realize it too when their ratings sink faster than the Titanic.
Long live KOTH!