What's it about?
Jason Strider and his friends grapple with dating, sex, and surviving as adults. They care more about hanging with each other, going to bars and hooking up than their entry level jobs, but when a one night stand steals Jason's heart and his pants, he begins a quest to get his beloved jeans back - and hopefully the girl - while growing up along the way.
You should watch if...
• you are a wanna-be hipster.
• you think every twenty-something in the world spends all day every day doing nothing but hanging around corner stores and/or parties chatting with each other in über-hip slang about the cool sex they've been having/alcohol they've been drinking/pot they've been smoking.
So, how was it?
I JUST WANT MY PANTS BACK is one of those shows that thinks it's being so realistic about "real twenty-somethings" in "real-life Brooklyn" that has in actuality fabricated an odd, hyper-active, hyper-hipster, hyper-"cool" fantasy world that's underscored by the edgiest pop music of the moment, inhabited by one-dimensional, stereotypical archetypes of hipsters, losers and stoners. It would be funny if MTV wasn't trying so hard to pass it off as realism.
Vying simultaneously for the witty, lighting-fast repartee of HAPPY ENDINGS and the shockingly candid sexual exploits of SKINS, I JUST WANT MY PANTS BACK fails miserably at both. These characters are so shallow and unrecognizable from the mass of hipsters around them that it's impossible to care about their supposedly zingy one-liners. And the sex by now is so rote in its "shocking" nature (doing it in the refrigerator, really?) that it induces yawns and quizzical eyebrows rather than gasps. I'm not sure who exactly this show is aimed at. Its juvenile characters with whiny personalities and no burning desires beyond their next hookup, suggest a young, tweeny demographic. And yet the profanity and sex is so rampant as to suggest a slightly older, HBO-lite demographic. I think it will ultimately fail to engage with either.
Behind the sex and the speedy dialogue and the wanna-be coining of new hip phrases (as in, "mime a vagina" instead of "masturbate"), there is absolutely no subtext, no message, no hidden truths about what it really means to be a twentysomething in the big city struggling to find meaning in your life and your work and your relationships. Maybe the show would garner two stars if it was actually trying to say something through all noise. But as it is, this soulless schlockfest rates a big fat zero.
Rating:
* Atrocious. I will never watch this show again. Ever.
I think I've said enough.
Your turn, Fellow Addicts! Did the show manage to shock and engage you with its frank sex talk? Or did it ring completely false for you too? 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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