Review – Free Agents
Free Agents – NBC – 8:30/7:30pm Wednesday – USA
NBC has had a lot of success recently in turning British sitcoms into American hits, by which I mean that NBC had one success that one time with The Office; it’s just that one success is a higher strike rate than most networks. Despite not having the formula to be able to turn hits from other countries into hits of their own NBC have decided to give it another shot by remaking British comedy Free Agents. Free Agents stars Hank Azaria and Kathryn Hahn, two genuinely talented people, as a pair of recently single co-workers who start sleeping together, but not dating. Much like NBC’s other Wednesday night comedy Up All Night, Free Agents has a cast who have been known to be funny elsewhere, but it has a script that stubbornly refuses to find anything funny for them to do.
Hank Azaria plays Alex, a recently divorced man who still gets upset randomly throughout the day. Kathryn Hahn plays Helen, a widow whose husband died a year ago. After a one-night stand Helen thinks they shouldn’t jump into a relationship because Alex is still obvious hung up on his ex-wife. Free Agents is a classic workplace comedy where the workplace is populated by stock sitcom types. Joining Alex and Helen, are Dan (Mo Mandel) the over-the-top douchebag who tries to get Alex back in the game, Gregg (Al Madrigal, who looks and acts like a poor man’s Fred Armisen) the geek who desperately wants to be included, Emma (played by the surprisingly irritating Natasha Leggero) the snarky assistant, Stephen (Anthony Head) as the kooky boss, and Walter (Joe Lo Truglio) as the weird security guard. The only thing Free Agents is missing is a studio audience.
There are some single-camera comedies that embrace their lack of a laughtrack, filling in all of the moments that would usually be spent listening to an audience laugh with more jokes; think 30 Rock or Community. Then there are some single-camera comedies that act like they desperately want to be jumping around in front of a studio audience, like this one does. Stock sets, stock characters, everybody playing everything big and broad for an audience that just isn’t there. There was even a moment early in the episode when Alex was asked to regale his co-workers with his night of love making with an unnamed partner. Alex starts listing off wacky sexual positions and a strange thing happens, his co-workers practically fall over themselves laughing at his wide variety of made-up positions. Free Agents was so desperate for a studio audience that it turned its cast into one.
What seems to have happened with Free Agents is that when they took away the laughtrack they also took away the laughs. Unlike NBC’s other Wednesday night comedy, the snooze-worthy Up All Night, you can see where Free Agents is trying to get laughs. Alex and co. all work at a PR Firm, so when Dan decides Alex should get back in the game, he sits everybody down to holds a strategy meeting in order to rebrand Alex as a guy women might want to date. It’s an idea that could be quite funny, like something Barney might do to Ted on How I Met Your Mother, but Free Agents finds absolutely nothing funny to do with the idea and it just kind of sits there lifelessly until the next scene arrives. The supporting characters are just a collection of walking jokes, Gregg is pathetic, Stephen is touchy feely, and it all just feels very been-there-seen-this.
Free Agents is another laughless comedy from NBC, although this one has the benefit of a strong cast who could be incredibly funny given the right material. If you were to tell me that around episode six Free Agents turned into one of the funniest new comedies of the year then I’d probably believe you. I hate to leave any review with ‘maybe give it a few episodes’ but as I mentioned in my review of Up All Night, comedies are notorious for taking time to find their feet, just look at Happy Endings, a show I all but dismissed after its premiere but turned into one of my favourite comedies by the end of the season. There’s nothing openly detestable about Free Agents, so it might be worth giving it another couple of episodes to see if it can work things out. If not then we’ll just be stuck with another comedy that forgot to bring the comedy.
Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad
