Exec by Day, Excess by Night

Since I have not watched anything on Fox since the series finale of Arrested Development, naturally I haven’t been up on the new shows that have debuted on the channel since. One such show is The Loop which I hadn’t heard of until someone was nice enough to send along a promotional copy of season one of the show. And since the first season only had seven episodes, it must be great because Fox doesn’t let quality shows get into the double digit number of episodes (see Firefly). The only problem with that is theory is on the package of DVD is a sticker saying the second season is coming soon. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will ever make to air as the network already cut the number of episodes and this is Fox so they could always burn the ones that have already been shot to run against the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics.

The show centers around Bret Harrison (Grounded for Life) who is straddling the line between work, where he is the youngest executive at the twelfth largest airline, and his life at home with his three roommates are still reveling in their mid-twenties party lifestyle. This leads to two basically different shows, the zany workplace type show with quirky co-workers (see Night Court) and friends hanging out at their apartment and favorite watering hole (see, well, Friends) with one working much better than the other.

The part that works is the time at work thanks mostly to Phil Baker Hall (Ghostbusters II) as Harrison’s boss who isn’t afraid to say what he means and never fails to make you laugh as well as Joy Osmanski as Harrison’s jaded secretary who is quick to remind anyone about her fancy degree and the irony that they are the same name. The weak link at the office though is Mimi Rogers (the first Mrs. Tom Cruise) as the token cougar who for some reason goes in-between trying to hook up with Harrison and making gay jokes about him in every other episode.

The other part of the show is something we have seen before, not too mention done better currently on How I Met Your Mother and no one has done a better job in expressing the post college life than Wonderfalls, but of course Fox canceled it. But anyways. At home, Harrison lives with his older brother, played by Eric Christian Olsen (Dumb and Dumberer) who averages about a new job per episode including three in the Pilot. Also living college friend and Harrison crush that, of course doesn’t know he does, Amanda Loncar. Rounding out the roommates is the very serviceable token hot chick Sarah Mason (7th Heaven) who works at the bar the group patrons.

The episodes are pretty hit or miss that run the gambit from thoroughly funny to something only a Fox audience would find funny for instance in the Pilot having Harrison change from his work clothes to his party one while driving which ends up being part of the opening credits (don’t try that at home kids) and text on the screen that mentions that Olen’s mother smoked herb while pregnant. The text, that shows up occasionally really has no purpose as for the most part it states the obvious. Well this is from Fox whose viewers need a game show to figure out if they are smarter than a fifth grader.

Sadly another negative is Harrison himself who is the least interesting character on the show which wouldn’t be so bad as Ted is the least interesting on How I Met Your Mother as well as Will and Grace from their show, but what makes thing worse is Harrison for some reason ends every sentence by having his voice go up two octaves.

In the end, with only seven episodes, the show is a good way to kill a lazy afternoon especially at the low cost of the DVD or just throw it into you favorite movie rental queue. Just don’t expect much in the way of extras on the disk as it only feature a short featurette just has the cast members going over the premise of the show. Although the disk does start off with your usual, “The views expressed in the commentaries…” yet I couldn’t actually find any commentaries anywhere. But I implore any fifth grader to actually find them. For those just interested in the token hot chick, just go straight to Tiger Express where she decides to dance whenever someone buys a certain drink of course leading to someone taking advantage of the situation and Bear Drop Soup where I only have one word: hot tub.

The Loop 1.x gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.