Review – Allen Gregory

Allen Gregory – FOX – 8:30/7:30pm Sunday – USA

Now that we know for sure FOX is only going to give The Simpsons another two seasons before it brings the long-running animated series to a close it puts its fresh batch of animated shows in a new light. FOX have three series to choose from to replace The Simpsons when the time comes, the upcoming Napoleon Dynamite (and unless it suddenly becomes 2005 again you can probably bet this isn’t going to last long), the hilarious Bob’s Burgers that debuted earlier in the year, and Allen Gregory, a horrible new series from Jonah Hill who lends his voice to the title character, a seven year old who talks and acts like an arrogant adult. While I loved Bob’s Burgers from the first episode I had the exact opposite reaction to Allen Gregory. I hated this pilot so much and when it comes time for FOX to pick The Simpsons successor you know which show I’ll be rooting for.

Allen Gregory is a pretentious little jerk who has to attend elementary school because his uber-rich parents are running out of cash. Allen Gregory has two dads, Jeremy (Nat Faxon) and Richard (French Stewart), who is somehow not voiced by the Dean from Community before looking and sounding almost exactly like him. They also have an adopted daughter named Julie, who they saved from Cambodia. Characters in Allen Gregory come in two varieties, there are the arrogant loudmouths (most notably Allen Gregory, but also his dad Richard) and there are the put-upon nice characters who the first set of characters are awful to. The joke is that Allen Gregory and Richard are horrible people who act horrible to everybody, and isn’t it funny how horrible they’re being, it’s not horrible at all, watching horrible characters be horrible all the time?

Once you’ve gotten the joke that Allen Gregory is a seven year old kid who acts like an adult (a character Family Guy already has in Stewie and the last thing the world needs is ‘Family Guy but only about Stewie’) there is nothing else to this series. Once you’ve seen Allen Gregory talk over the top of one person, you’ve seen him talk over the top of every person. Once you’ve seen Allen Gregory belittle his step-father Jeremy, you’ve seen him belittle Julie, or the kid from school, or Jeremy again. It’s the same three jokes repeated over and over again. When this show isn’t doing something it’s already done before it throws up an idea like Allen Gregory falling in love with his old, obese principal and then fantasising about it. You can hear the writers room now “wouldn’t it be funny if, get this, he’s a kid, right, and he fantasies about an old lady who’s FAT and UGLY, how hilarious would that be?”

You don’t necessarily have to like the main character of a series to find the show funny, but it’s hard to enjoy anything where you loathe the creature at the centre of the show. The problem is a combination of the character, who is a dick even if he’s a dick on purpose, and Jonah Hill’s voice acting which adds an extra layer of irritating on top of what’s already an incredibly irritating character. Where Bob’s Burgers created a quirky world filled with a variety of hilarious characters, Allen Gregory has created a world that revolves around one, awful character. I hated this show, I hated its comic sensibility, I hated its main character, and I found it to be all sorts of horrible. While there are certainly shows from this Fall TV season that are worse than Allen Gregory, no show made my blood boil as much as this one did.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Ugly

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