PILOT REVIEW: Truth Be Told

TRUTH BE TOLD

Starring: Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Tone Bell, Vanessa Lachey, Bresha Webb

Created by DJ Nash
Written by DJ Nash, Directed by Pamela Fryman

THE PREMISE
Truth Be Told is a new sitcom that centers on two "diverse" couples (they make that point painfully obvious). Mitch (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) is a college professor married to attorney Tracy (Vanessa Lachey). They are best friends and neighbors with stand-up comedian Russell (Tone Bell) and his wife, Angie (Bresha Webb). And yes, in case it wasn't clear enough in the pilot, they are diverse couples and friends!

THE REVIEW
Truth Be Told is in competition with timeslot competitor Dr. Ken for the worst new show of the year but I think I have to give the edge to Dr. Ken, which is more aggressively awful. Truth Be Told is just kind of blah. Nothing feels authentic or real with these characters and it's not funny. I guess the best thing I could say about this show is there is at least a bit of chemistry between the couples as well as the friends, Mitch and Russell. They still don't feel real because the writing is so terrible, but I could see it getting to a point where there is a good rapport between them.

The biggest problem is how obviously it tries to deal with race relations. It's not done as cleverly as the surprisingly good summer entry, The Carmichael Show. And even Black-ish, which deals with race issues as part of its premise, handles it in a much more subtle and smart way. This is a show that started with a random race joke at a Chinese place and then seemed to telling us, "Look! People of different races can be both friends and married! Look!!" They didn't weave it organically into the story, they made it painfully obvious. Coming a couple weeks after the brilliant Black-ish season premiere about the "n" word, this very stupid discussion about the word in relation to a Jay-Z song just felt so uninspired.

On top of that, there were very tired sitcom cliches. How many times do we need to see an episode about a hot babysitter? And they chose that for the pilot? There is just simply nothing new to see here. Even with passable performances from the four leads, the writing is just not there. It's not even close. It seems like we should be well past the point of putting shows like this on the air. There have been shows I've hated more but very few I've felt more "meh" about.

WILL I WATCH IT AGAIN?
Nope. No desire.