The Paul Reiser Show – Are they TRYING to screw up this show?

Okay Paul Reiser, you’re taking the good will I have toward you after all my Mad About You love over the years and flushing it down the toilet. It’s almost as though you and your writers are intentionally making this show unwatchable by over-acting on purpose.

If things don’t improve by episode three and this warmed-over version of Paul Buchman — an unfunny version of Paul Buchman at that — I’m going to have to quit you … well, quit your show anyway.

On paper, the story that was the chief focus of the second episode had potential: The Reiser family’s schedule had become so overloaded with ever-shifting appointments and chores that it had become frightfully easy for the parents to forget something or just generally screw up. As the mother of three kids who must be driven all over the place, who are due to this birthday party and that hockey game, and who need new cleats right NOW, an hour before a soccer game, I can thoroughly relate to the modern phenomenon of feeling as though you’ve become an unpaid executive assistant for your children and that you’re doing a lousy job at managing their stuff.

So there I was, ready and willing to find humor in this common problem which plagues my husband and I and prompts us to seek out more and more ways to attempt to get a handle on everything that’s going on with our own family and to not screw up. And The Paul Reiser Show blew it. I couldn’t find the humor in this episode with a flashlight and a magnifying glass.

Paul picking up the wrong friend for a playdate/sleepover could have been funny, but it wasn’t. In fact, I found Paul, whom I like, grating.

His wife Claire feeling scrutinized and judged by the other mothers at the dentist’s office for giving her son chewy candy while waiting for a tardy dental appointment, then getting admonished by the dentist because her son had a cavity … all of that could’ve been amusing because many parents fret about being judged by their peers for everything they do as mothers and fathers.

However the execution of these scenes was just bad. Or maybe it was the writing. Or perhaps it was both. Whatever it was, it didn’t prompt me to select “record all episodes” on my DVR. If the writers of this show want to see how to successfully make the craziness of contemporary parenting hilarious and relatable, they should start watching Modern Family and The Middle. And they should take copious notes. Those people know how to get it done. The Paul Reiser Show, not so much.

That bit with the howling cat — which didn’t even sound like a cat, it sounded like a person pretending to be a cat — fell flat. The Larry David-esque plotline where Paul’s innocuous comment to a film producer at a social occasion inadvertently led to a menacing looking would-be actor not getting a part in a movie, felt forced.

I’m really, really hoping that next week’s episode shows some improvement. If it doesn’t, I’ll have to stop watching this show and watch Mad About You episodes instead. Now that show was funny.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Apr 22, 2011 @ 14:56 EST5EDT