Whitney 1.01 "Spicing Things Up"

Please join The Couch Potato Tribune in welcoming Eldis Sula to our writing team! Eldis is a small-brained Albanian Elvis impersonator with a chest of fur and a heart of gold. He'll be covering Whitney sporadically (for as long as it lasts), Project Runway, and possibly more as the fall schedule resumes. Welcome Eldis!

Alex, please stay down.

Sweeps week came and went, and what a triumph it was for network sitcoms. You know, you’d think in 2011 people would be too smart to fall for the rusty laugh-track format, and well, they kind of are. But something’s been going on the past few years. Sitcoms have updated themselves to accommodate our increasing self-awareness. Awful shows like Two and a Half Men show us that primetime slots can contain more than transparent saccharine sweetness, but cynical plotlines revolving around characters who love to drink all the time and nonchalantly get prostitutes. So how do networks proceed after their sitcoms establish that it’s acceptable to portray ironic, imperfect people and families? They put on a show like Whitney.

No matter what you think about Whitney Cummings, you have to admit that she’s worked hard these past few years. We first got a taste of her as the kind of raunchy, kind of attractive comedienne at the Comedy Central roasts, but she’s since carved her own niche, evolving her second-rate Sarah Silverman shtick by keeping the naughty topics, losing the subtlety, and increasing the volume of her voice. But don’t worry Chelsea Lately fans; if you liked her vag talk and safe racism on the tabloid show’s, uh, celebrity (?) panel, then you’ll love the naughty role-plays and sassy black nurses that she has to offer on her new show Whitney.

The show’s first episode takes a look at Whitney’s cooled-off relationship with her boyfriend Alex, played by Chris D’Elia (who, whether you’re funny or a wigger, you might already find offensive as a guy from the oversaturated LA stand-up scene who needs to flesh out his jokes or as the least able writer from Snacks and Shit). Well, Whitney and Alex have been together for three years, don’t have much sex anymore, and need to decide whether it’s shit or get off the matrimonial pot. You’ve seen all these monotonous relationship jokes in every sitcom already. Whitney scoffing at the thought of sex a whole five times a week, her and Alex in bed deciding whether they should have sex, Whitney trying to re-ignite the spark by welcoming Alex home to naughty nurse role-play that goes terribly wrong. It’s a trite raunchiness, not only because it’s been done before, but because everything ends up peachy keen at the end of the half-hour. Whitney’s loud-mouthed edginess is a superficial mask for its bland underlying conservatism. It only took Alex getting a concussion during role-play for the two to realize there’s nothing wrong and they love each other.

Still, as derivative as it is, we can’t quite call Whitney bad, if by bad we mean run-of-the-mill sitcom romping. At a wedding, the sleazebag Mark compliments recently divorced friend Roxanne on her “side-boob.” Unamused, disillusioned Roxance tells him off, saying, “That’s armpit fat.” This isn’t the squeaky clean stuff of which sitcoms are made, nor is it terribly heavy-handed; just a small, observant, funny-enough detail. However, what little comic tension that’s established is undermined by Mark’s excessive retort: “It all feels the same in the dark.” This exchange, and especially the three-second pause for laughs that follows, sums up nicely what’s wrong with Whitney. The show revels in the cheesiness of its flat jokes and dead format. But ultimately, although it’s self-aware enough to be parodic, it’s not self-aware enough to be a good parody.

Mark to Roxanne: "Get it???????"

The worst tragedy of all, somehow, is not that a major network gave Whitney a show, but that it was NBC, who’s worked so hard to establish their rock-solid Thursday night comedy line-up. Fans of Community, Parks and Recreation, and the Office are not going to watch this blah blah bland show. Whitney would have at least done better on CBS, the reigning titan of laugh-track sitcoms about young contemporary white characters. Whitney the thirtysomething photographer and her internet CEO boyfriend would have been much more at home with the Big Bang nerds, the yuppies on How I Met Your Mother, and the reactionary anti-hipster hipster waitresses of Producer Cummings’s other new pet, 2 Broke Girls.

In short, there’s no reason to watch Whitney. It’s not good or funny, and if you’ve seen any of the previews you get the idea. But if you like to watch TV through your Twitter, the show will give you a ton of stuff to complain about on the internet. Besides, watching bad stuff can be fun, too. Actually, Whitney counts on it. You might just get captivated by how the show, aware of how awful it is, shamelessly ticks on like clockwork.

-Eldis is covering the debut 'hit' (ratings-wise at least) 'Whitney.' Please feed our fish, they're turning up dead in the mornings