Quickie Review: Sunnyside

[Kevin M.]

The concept isn’t bad, but the execution feels a lot like the “Community” pilot episode, but with a more diverse cast. Oh, and although I do like Kal Penn, he only has one facial expression... he ought to stand in front of a mirror and work on that. 

Pilot free on iTunes 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/sunnyside-season-1/id1476332327

--

Kevin M. (RPCV)

[Dave Sikula]

This was to me what "The Unicorn" was to you. I stopped the recording about 15 minutes in, thankful that more brain cells had not been killed.

--Dave Sikula

[Tom Wolper]

On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 2:22 AM 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV <tvor...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

This was to me what "The Unicorn" was to you. I stopped the recording about 15 minutes in, thankful that more brain cells had not been killed.

The pilot episode showed enough promise that I was going to write a review here. When I watched the second episode last night, I did not make it to the first commercial break and I cancelled the series recording in my DVR. The bright spot I saw in the pilot was about the Kafkaesque experience of legal immigrants dealing with a shifting and more hostile bureaucracy. These are people who live by the rules as they are marginalized and threatened by those same rules. The second episode went straight to the dumbest of all sitcom tropes, a mistaken presumption because the characters refused to have a simple and obvious communication, and they lost me for good.

Another thing that bothered me that I would have forgiven in a good series is that the citizenship test is not that difficult and doesn't require intensive studying. When Craig Ferguson tailed about it when he became a citizen, it was, "Do you hate Al Qaida and like bubble gum?" The real test is 10 questions and not much more difficult.