Review – Outsourced

Outsourced – NBC – 9:30/8:30pm Thursday – USA

Outsourced is offensive. I know this because I was offended by it. It tells the story of an American who works for a call centre that loses all their jobs to India, he’s forced to move to Mumbai where he’ll look after a wacky team of Indians and teach them the ways of America whilst experiencing HIGHlarious cultural differences. I was offended by this show in so many different ways. I was offended as an Australian. I was offended as somebody who’s worked at a sales call centre. I was offended as a fan of NBC’s Thursday night comedy line-up. I was offended as somebody who’s worked in an industry that frequently loses jobs to India.  And I was offended as a human being.

As an Australian? How can I be offended as an Australian? The main character is an American named Todd Dempsey (Ben Rappaport). This being an American show the idea of having a cast of one white person and a dozen bumbling Indian stereotypes must have been scary for the network so Todd gets some white people to interact with in his building. There’s American Charlie (Diedrich Bader from The Drew Carey Show) who warns Todd off the curry because it’ll make you poop a lot. And then there’s Tonya (Pippa Black from Neighbours) an Australian who works for Koala Airlines and at one point uses the expression ‘woop-woop’, and then apologizes because “that’s Aussie for out in the middle of nowhere”. I’m mostly offended because if their Australian character is so off-base and insulting how offensive must Indians find their on-screen representatives.

As somebody who worked at a sales call centre I’m offended because by the end of the first episode Outsourced tries to make sales look like fun. Won’t it be great if everybody can up-sell at least one customer today? No, it won’t be fun. There is comedy to be found in the world of sales call centres but it’s usually from the ‘this is so shit that laughing instead of crying is our only saviour’. Also, Outsourced exists in a magical land where call centres look like open plan offices designed for a pharaoh. Where are the petitions, for crying out loud?

As a fan of NBC’s Thursday night comedy line-up I’m offended that NBC have added this show to their roster. I’m all out in love with Community, while 30 Rock and The Office and still both solid deliverers of laughs. Outsourced has replaced the hilarious Parks & Recreation which is being held til Mid-Season and that’s fairly offensive in itself. NBC have replaced a weekly dose of Ron fucking Swanson with a character named Manmeet whose name is a punch line of several jokes because you see in other country’s people’s names are different, and his sounds like MAN MEAT. How funny is that?

As somebody who has worked in an industry that is frequently losing jobs to Indian call-centres I’m offended because Outsourced doesn’t seem to care. The boss of the company makes some a joke or two about how people hate him now, but Todd doesn’t seem too fussed by the whole thing. If Outsourced was able to take a view other than ‘blindly insulting another race of people’ and was instead able to find in Todd the resentment for these people who have taken all of his friends jobs than this would be the ideal set up for some dark comedy. But Todd doesn’t care, he’s just cheerily going about his day making jokes about how there are sacred cows walking around. He doesn’t start from a dark place and then slowly comes to realization that these are people too and that they also need jobs, nope, he’s just right on board from the word go.

Finally I’m offended as a human being because as a human being I deserve better than this. Okay, not much better than this, but you know, slightly better than this. Human beings deserve better than jokes about how arranged marriage is so strange, how funny it is that when using the phonetic alphabet Manmeet says ‘K for Krishna’, or how curry sure does look gross. $#*! My Dad Says was poorly made trash, and Outsourced has a better look than that show but no other show has made me openly mock it whilst still watching it quite like Outsourced did. Outsourced is a horrible show, and while this pilot deserves nothing but derision it’s entirely possible that Outsourced can turn things around; as an Australian I like to root for the underdog, as somebody who was stuck in sales I believe that you can find humour in anything, as a fan of NBC’s Thursday night comedy line-up I hope some of that goodness rubs off on this show, but as a human being I’m doubtful because Outsourced really is a special kind of awful.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Ugly