CBS's Worst Week - Rucker's Review

So I just watched Worst Week, the new half-hour single-camera sitcom (?) from CBS. Basically it's a weekly version of Ben Stiller's Meet the Parents. Except not funny. WW stars Kyle Bornheimer as Sam, the extremely unlucky boyfriend/babydaddy of Melanie Clayton, played by Erinn Hayes. The only recognizable faces in the show are those of Melanie's parents, played by Earl's mom from My Name is Earl and the dad from That 70's Show.

The show is altogether not very good. In any way. All of the "funny" scenarios were highly implausible, beginning with Sam urinating in a pot in Melanie's parents' kitchen when the power was out because he somehow could not distinguish the difference between a huge kitchen and a cooking pot, and a small bathroom and a toilet, in the dark (scene pictured above).

As a result, Sam's urine spills onto the floor, which Melanie's father then slips and falls on, giving him a concussion. Now that Melanie's father has a concussion he has trouble walking and lays down on the sidewalk right outside a funeral home. The funeral directors take him inside and allow him to take a rest in the back room. A call is made by the undertaker to Melanie's home, which is received by Sam who misinterprets the message as being that Melanie's dad had died. He then relays this misinformation to the rest of the family who is of course as a result devastated. Sam is then sent to the pharmacy to refill Melanie's depressed mom's Valium prescription, when he gets in a head-on collision with someone who turns out to be Melanie's dad on his way back from the funeral home. Sam excitedly drags the dad's now-unconscious body into the home exclaiming that her dad is indeed alive. Melanie's mom thinks this is a cruel joke because he still appears to be dead, until the dad suddenly wakes up and says "What's going on here?" which then causes Melanie's mom to freak out and collapse on the floor as well. AFTER all that, all is well because everyone's alive and happy, but the power goes out again. Sam volunteers to flip the breaker switch in the basement and in the process starts a fire that burns, you guessed it, the painting of Melanie's father that Melanie's mother had just received back after commissioning a world-famous artist to create it.

Sound insanely ridiculous? It was. Way too much was happening.

There are many successful single-camera sitcoms: My Name is Earl, The Office, 30 Rock, but Worst Week just isn't as funny as them. It isn't really funny at all. There's no "Joy" (Jaime Pressly's character on Earl) or Dwight (from The Office) that make you laugh no matter what they say. All the characters in this show are pretty blah.

Worst Week was filled with one implausible situation after another and never really stopped until time just completely ran out. Also it was just too quiet. Without a laugh track, (which this show DESPERATELY needs because otherwise no laughs will ever be heard) the show gets awkward at moments and kinda boring.

Also, I still don't understand the title. Does "worst week" imply that this is a series based on one specific week in this guy's life? Or what? If so, didn't they pick up on the fact that sitcoms with specific time elements don't always do particularly well? (Big Day, Notes from the Underbelly, Watching Ellie...)

Rucker's Rating: Sooo Bad

PS: I don't know what the ratings were for the premiere but I give it a max of 4 episodes.

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