What's it about?
Charming, fast talking Marty Kaan and his crack team of MBA-toting management consultants are playing America's 1 percent for everything they've got. They put the con in consulting as they charm smug, unsuspecting corporate fat cats into closing huge deals, and spending a fortune for their services. Twisting the facts, spinning the numbers, and spouting just enough business school jargon to dazzle the clients, there's no end to what this crew wont' do to and for each other, while laughing all the way to the bank.
(Synopsis fro SHO.)
So, how was it?
Headlined by Don Cheadle and Kristen Bell, I was hopefully that this show would be a new guilty pleasure. Boy, was I wrong. There was nothing pleasurable about watching the first episode of this over-bloated, smug, crass show.
"Management consultant" is an intriguing job, if only because no one really knows what it means. A show about management consultants and their jobs and how they wrangle big corporations could be fascinating. A show about the tawdry sex lives of people whose job happens to be that of management consultants? Infinitely less so.
It seems like the writers wanted to see how much they could shock the audience, stuffing nearly every frame with innuendo, nudity or straight-up sex, including a completely pointless lesbian hook-up in a public bathroom and completely manufactured sexual tension between Cheadle and Bell. We know that one advantage of being on cable is that you can have more realistic, explicit sex. But it should still be at least tangentially related to your show's plotline. Everything about the pilot of this show was gratuitous.
Then there's the awkward moments where the action freezes and Cheadle steps out of the tableau to speak directly to the audience. This is usually to explain some consulting term that we weren't all that interested in anyway. The writers seem to think this is a really clever stylistic choice, as they use it five or six times in the first half-hour alone. It actually feels awkward and condescending.
Then there's the whole idea of the plot: that these "management consultants" are actually conning the 1% out of their ill-deserved spoils. This could be interesting, what with all the pent-up aggression against corporate fat cats that's been building up lately. Could be, if the protagonists were then doing anything interesting with the money (it doesn't have to be anything as on-the-nose as donating it to sick children, but there's got to be something constructive you can do with that much dough). That kind of modern-day, slick, Robin Hood story would've been intriguing. Instead, Kaan and his cohorts use the money to visit strip clubs, hook up with strippers, eat at $1000/plate sushi restaurants, and get into drunken brawls with their clients. In short, they use the money to do exactly what the people they're stealing it from are doing with it. At the end of the day, Kaan and Co. are completely indistinguishable from the greedy CEOs. They are the 1%.
Rating:
* Atrocious. I will never watch this show again. Ever.
I have no interest in spending time every week watching a bunch of greedy, spoiled adults who act like children swindling other greedy, spoiled people out of their money so they can blow it on strippers. Count me out. After three new midseason premieres, we have two new Atrocious ratings -- first WORK IT and now this mess. Let's hope the rest of the midseason lineup turns out better than these two duds.
What about you, Fellow Addicts? Did you find anything to like in the pilot? Or did you also think Don Cheadle and Kristen Bell's undeniable talents were criminally wasted? Vote in the poll below and then hit the comments!
(For the complete rundown of when all the new shows are premiering, check out my 2012 Midseason TV Preview.)
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