PILOT REVIEW: Broke

BROKE

Starring: Jaime Camil, Pauley Perrette, Natasha Leggero, Izzy Diaz, Antonio Raul Corbo

Created by Alex Herschlag
Written by Alex Herschlag, Directed by Victor Gonzalez

Broke has been billed as Pauley Perrette's return to CBS following her long run on NCIS. She's also been the focal point of most of the advertisements. So I was surprised to see it was Jaime Camil who received top billing for the show. The fact that this was what I chose to talk about first in my review should tell you how I felt about this show, the latest in the unfortunate string of lame multi-camera sitcoms. It continues to bother me so much that shows in this form struggle so hard to be clever or well-written when there are so many historical examples (Cheers, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, etc) that did it to perfection.

Broke is about a blue collar single mom, Jackie (Perrette) who has to welcome in her very wealthy sister Elizabeth and her husband Javier (Natasha Leggero and Jaime Camil) after they have lost all their money. In addition to Jackie's son, Sammy (Antonio Raul Corbo), there is also a character who's basically an already tired running joke, Javier's assistant Luis (Izzy Diaz).

This was a premise-based plot that was entirely predictable. What a surprise that the characters would be feuding at the beginning of the pilot but a happy family (thanks in part to a child) within the next 20 minutes. The actors are not playing real characters, they are playing caricatures. Perrette was the best of the bunch, I guess, but her demeanor reminds me a lot of Kristen Johnson on Mom and Johnson is my least favorite actress on that show. I never watched NCIS so this is my first exposure to Perrette. Jaime Camil and Izzy Diaz have an annoying chemistry already while Natasha Leggero was the worst of the bunch with a very fake performance.

I have been doing this blog for ten years and I am just so tired of these lame network multi-camera sitcoms. Sure, once in awhile we get a good one like Mom or a tolerable one like The Neighborhood. But a format that used to be the smartest in the business has instead become a place for the lowest common denominator. There's no sense of timing, no emphasis on character development, no clever writing. I don't know why networks cannot figure out this style anymore and it makes me sad.