PILOT REVIEW: $#*! My Dad Says

$#*! MY DAD SAYS

Starring: William Shatner, Jonathan Sadowski, Nicole Sullivan, Will Sasso
Created by David Kohan, Max Mutchnick, Justin Halpern, & Patrick Schumacker
Written by David Kohan, Max Mutchnick, Justin Halpern, & Patrick Schumacker, Directed by James Burrows

$#*! My Dad Says is a new CBS sitcoms based on the popular twitter feed created by Justin Halpern. In the TV edition, recently unemployed Henry (Jonathan Sadowski) needs money and stops by to see his estranged Dad (William Shatner) who is a grumpy 72 year old man. The show focuses on the inappropriate and outlandish things Dad says, hence the title. Rounding out the cast are Henry's brother Vince (Will Sasso) and his wife Bonnie (Nicole Sullivan).

There was not much to like about this pilot. After promising new multi-camera sitcoms in Mike & Molly and Better With You, this was more reminiscent of the many multi-camera flops in recent years. The writers seemed too focused on coming up with outlandish and funny things for Shatner to say that they failed to build a plot or story around those statements (which aren't that funny anyway). Every actor in this show is over the top, most of all Shatner. He seems to deliver his lines for the sole purpose of eliciting a response from the studio audience. Will Sasso and Nicole Sullivan, both Mad TV alums, are also disappointing and overact. The pilot had many painful jokes and scenes including an unfunny recurring joke about the cot Henry is sleeping on and the final scene had a horrible back-and-forth between Shatner and Sadowski ("when" "now" "why" "because" "I see") that they did not once, not twice, but three times.

I didn't expect much from a sitcom starring William Shatner or from a sitcom based on a twitter feed but yet it even failed to meet those low expectations. There's nothing to see here that hasn't been seen a hundred times on sitcoms and the performances only make the already bad material worse. Multi-camera sitcoms may be making a comeback and that would be a good thing, but this is not part of the revival.

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