First Impressions: Perfect Couples

Tonight starts NBC highly touted three hour comedy block with critical darlings Community (8:00), Parks and Recreations (9:30), old stalwarts The Office (9:00), 30 Rock (10:00) with NBC’s highest rated new show from the fall Outsourced (10:30) pulling up the rear. The one new addition to the lineup Perfect Couples get the prime against the unwatchable $#*! My Dads Says timeslot at 8:30.

Much like the unfunny ABC freshman sitcom Better with You, Perfect Couples follows three couple and even features a similar type of cold open. Unlike Better with You, all the couples are not related aside from a brother and sister with the other relationship coming from common area of work. Olivia Munn (Date Night) and Hayes MacArthur (She’s Out of My League) are the uptight couple. Dave Walton (100 Questions) and Mary Elizabeth Ellis (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) are the couple that always fight. While Kyle Bornheimer (You Again) and Christine Woods (Flash Forward) are the grounded couple.

Much like Better with You, Perfect Couples started out pretty laughless. But by the second commercial break, the show got better, but still well below Outsourced in terms of quality laughs. But Perfect Couples does have one ace in the hole: Olivia Munn. Anyone who watched her on Attack of the Show she is a hardworking star in the making that will make it worth tuning in every weak because if there were to get on track, she will be the reason why.

Perfect Couples airs Thursdays at 8:30 on NBC. You can also stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Perfect Couples on iTunes.

They Say I'm Better off Now Than I Ever Was with Her

The Script stormed stateside as an Irish version of Maroon 5, emotional yearning lyrics over funky pop beats. Danny O’Donoghue even bears resemblance to Adam Lavine. Where Maroon 5 dedicated a set of songs to a chick name Jane before moving on to various other girls and vaguely political tones of their sophomore album, The Script still seems hung up on the same girl that tormented them on their second album despite the Science & Faith album title.

Most of that first album seemed to be inspired by the preverbal one that got away with heartbroken odes like That Man Who Can’t Be Moved about a guy waiting for a girl to come back to the place they met and Breakeven about a guy who cannot put his life back together knowing his ex-girlfriend has moved on. And just looking at titles like If You Ever Come Back (which shares a very similar guitar riff from Breakeven), Long Gone and Moved On it is more of the same here.

While the thematic haven’t changed, the music has gotten much tighter than their debut disk. The band aim for anthemic from the start of the album with You Won’t Feel a Thing and for the most part reach it. There are also a few swing and miss moments on the album including out of leftfield rap from B.o.B throughout Walk Away of that sticks out like Flavor Flav at a debutante ball. The previous song This = Love features an even more awkward rap in the middle of the song.

Song to Download – Nothing

Science and Faith gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.