By Pat Bataillon
My Boys is an awful show. It is the new show on TBS that has been advertised to everyone in Chicago over every medium for the last few weeks. There is so much wrong in this show I don’t even know where to start.
The dialogue was as predictable as an episode of Friends, the city views may as well have been from Vacation, and the acting purely bush league.
So here is the premise: PJ Franklin is one of the guys and she is having trouble balancing being a lady and still hanging with her boys. This character conflict is made apparent seven to ten times throughout the course of the 22-minute show. So for those of you with a short attention span, listen: She is having trouble being a lady and still hanging out with her boys. She is a sportswriter and a huge baseball fan. She collects baseball cards and follows the Cubs. She does not wear make-up and she drinks beer and eats chicken wings. She is way into old school Asteroids and poker; basically, she is real down-to-earth.
Then there are her friends – this will be brief because they’re pretty forgettable. Her brother is in a faux miserable marriage and is controlled by his wife – that has never been done before except for Al Bundy and Norm Peterson and the dad from Everybody Loves Raymond. Then there is the pathetic guy who is walked all over by women and is really sensitive so, insert your choice of romantic comedy star here. Then there are the buddies who have limited lines but are already pegged as undeveloped characters in this soon-to-be short-lived series.
Back to the show and how awful it was last night. I caught myself saying out loud to myself “Are you kidding me?!” at least four times. Like when the PJ – nicknamed Peeje – began to write and her thought-narration kicked in, a la Sex and the City. Several female friends tell me Sex and the City wasn’t total crap, but I beg to differ. That show had a terrible influence on plenty of things that I don’t have time to get into right now. But anyway, PJ starts thinking/talking about how referees in sports keep things fair – but there are no referees in the real world. Boo-hoo. That’s life. Any writer knows this one thing: if there were rules that were unbreakable in life, there would be no writers to break them. This is why this woman is an idiot.
Finally, the constant references to Chicago were ridiculous, and usually just plain wrong. Explaining how good the hamburgers are at the Billy Goat? Please. And a sportswriter who buys his pants at the Lord & Taylor at Water Tower Place? I’m pretty sure that’s never happened in Chicago newspaper history. If there are some brilliant people that want to make a show about Chicago, just cast Chicago actors and writers and be done with it; don’t just show panoramic views of John Hancock and Wrigley Field that you found on the cutting room floor of The Blues Brothers.
At least they didn’t go to a blues club last night. The writers are probably saving that for the next episode. They’ll probably take the Blue Line to get there, and along the way, Peeje will fret about how hard it is to balance being a woman and being one of the guys. For the billionth time.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on November 29, 2006