First Impressions - Four Kings

This has been a good year for sitcoms. After a good decade without a new good one, this year has seen three very watchable half hour programs that debuted this year. But then again, with all the great sitcoms this year, there still was the absolutely horrible The War at Home. But one of the better new ones, My Name Is Earl along with The Office, was moved to Thursday this week as NBC tries to resurrect its once unbeatable Must See TV lineup which hasn’t been Must See since Friends started to suck, and for those keeping track at home, that would be circa the mid-nineties.

To round out the new all comedy lineup is Will & Grace which I didn’t even realized was still on and is followed by the new Four Kings. The show follows four friends who are now living in an apartment left to one of them by his dead grandmother, who just so happened to coined them the Four Kings. The show stars the werewolf from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and three dudes whose IMDB pages look as impressive as mine, well that’s if I had one. For some reason my appearance on Letterman back in 1994 or the numerous times I was on public access don’t warrant my very own page. But anyways.

Last night started off in earnest with a decent theme song in the Counting Crow’s Hangin' Around. Then it was all downhill from there. There were very few jokes that actually made me laugh, but that could be due to the episode focused around the grandmother’s death and proceeding funeral and I’m not the biggest fan of dead grandma jokes. But that’s just me. Plus everything in the show was even easier to telegraph than Reunion. When the show is advertised as four dudes living together, you knew that the grandson would pick to live his buddies over his girlfriend, or as one of the guys put it “Bro’s over ho’s.” I think that was the first time someone used that phrase since Friends started to suck. Had she actually moved in with the Four Kings that may have made for an interesting show. Seriously, these networks really need to hire me as a consultant.

The only bright spot of the whole episode is when Oz went to break up with his girlfriend, even though I wasn’t really sure why all the guys had to break up with their girlfriends, or personal trainer in one of their cases, don’t ask, it wasn’t funny. But Oz’s confrontation with the twin daughters was hilarious. Sadly, since he broke up with their mother that will most likely be the last we see of them.

Verdict: It’s up against Survivor and Smallville, so even if it were remotely good, I still wouldn’t be watching it.