Mohr (left, with King) has quite a Project cut out for him. / Monty Brinton/CBS
Test Pilot is a semiregular feature sharing my first impressions of the pilots for next fall’s shows. These aren’t reviews, since these pilots can be rewritten, recast and retooled before airing, and the shows that eventually get on the air can prove much better or worse. But, premature opinions are why God invented the Internet, so let’s get on with…
The Show: Project Gary (CBS)
The Premise: Gary Barnes (Jay Mohr) is a recently divorced contractor who’s getting ready to move on with his life. He shares custody of an 11-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son with his ex-wife (Paula Marshall), who’s judgmental, condescending—and getting ready, unbeknownst to Gary, to get remarried to their former marriage counselor. Gary’s “project,” apparently, is to get his life back together as he starts to date a single mom (Jaime King) and gets a handle on being a solo parent.
First Impressions: There are not many sitcoms that make me pine for the human subtleties of Two and a Half Men, so I guess you can say Project Gary accomplished something. There’s not an authentic character in this mess of unfunny cliches: not the shrew-goddess ex-wife, the nerdy son, the p.c. daughter, the milquetoast counselor nor the jerky protagonist. The closest thing to a believable personality is single mom’s and that’s mainly because she has no personality. I was a fan of Mohr’s in Action, but he’s undeniably limited, and—while I make no judgment about him as a person in real life—he’s just not as credible when you’re actually expected to like him. Though mainly I have to blame his character, an obnoxious overgrown boy—the kind of nothing-but-beer-in-the-fridge guy you’ve seen a million times in sitcoms—whose deficiencies are supposed to be endearing and make you root for him to progress, but simply make Mohr come off like a very poor man’s Denis Leary. I know I say in the disclaimer above that Test Pilot is not a review, but I can’t lie to you either: this is an atrocious pilot, and if anyone manages to remake it into something approaching good between now and September, they should be enlisted to heal the blind and the lame.
Do I Want to See Another One? About as much as you want to see your spouse after an ugly divorce.