Review: Do Not Disturb
Ah, out with the old, in with the new. The television season is dead, long live the next television season. And to prepare for it, I’m going to review new shows as the pilots become available.
Do Not Disturb; Fox, Wednesday 9:00 PM
Let’s watch Robert Wagner’s long and distinguished career self-destruct, shall we?
Ok, before I tell you how stupid and offensive I found this pilot, let me rush through the obligatory plot summary; there’s a high-class hotel owned by R.J. (the afore-mentioned Wagner) badly-run by his son Neil (Jerry O’Connell; Sliders, Crossing Jordan) who is so over-the-top he thinks he’s responsible for the hotel being listed as one of the Times’ 10-best places to stay, with the expected quirky employees who all make fools of themselves by insulting the overweight, gay, blond, black, and any other stereotype the writers could come up with - I’m certain they think they’re being edgy, but, well, not-so-much.
The Human Resources person, Rhonda (Niecy Nash, Reno 911) is the one designated to stand up to Neil’s foolishness, so of course he mocks her with a bad stereotype impression. Molly (Jolene Purdy) is an overweight reservation clerk who want to be a singing sensation and believes her path to that goal lies with becoming a front desk clerk (yeah, I don’t get it either), but in this hotel all of the front desk clerks are stacked wearing high heels they constantly injure themselves on (this is supposed to be the episode driver, but it doesn’t work at all and I’m not certain even the writers could keep track of it), so she doesn’t stand a chance (Neil: “Your downstairs girl is blocking both my upstairs girls.”). Molly needs to tell her this is not, “the Plump and Lovely Bed and Big Breakfast, it’s the Skinny Bitch in High Heels Hotel, you feel me?” She calls Daddy, who is a hot-shot lawyer, and…ah, heck, you can write that sub-plot in your head and do a better job than these writers did.
 Jesse Tyler Ferguson show how not to run a hotel…or a sitcom |
Meanwhile, Larry (Jesse Tyler Ferguson, The Class, speaking of going from bad to worse) is the gay head of Housekeeping, who speaks Mandarin to the staff and insults gays on the telephone with his partner (”Get whatever color curtains you want, you know I don’t care about that stuff…n-no, not PURPLE, c’mon…t-t-that’s too Gay…w’I know we’re gay, but n-that’s just Gay-On-Gay…”), and Jason (Brando Eaton, Zoey 101) the ah-shucks innocent bellman who is in Molly’s sights and wants nothing more than to work in the basement with what Neil calls “the hobbits.”
Ok, by now you get the idea; this sitcom, formerly known as The Inn, is populated with a bunch of whiny losers backed by an over-loud laugh track. I realize comedy is subjective, but this isn’t funny, it’s pathetic; writers with no imagination looking for the most insulting lines possible in an attempt to shock since they can’t amuse, actors mugging, some painfully out of their element (O’Connell is best when doing the honest-yet-intelligent shtick, here he’s just mugging embarrassingly over-the-top) and others just making fools of their characters. I cannot imagine even the lowest-denominator finding this unimaginative program funny…of course, I do tend to over-estimate the American public (witness My Name Is Earl), but this is really bad.
What I can’t figure out is how Robert Wagner became involved; admittedly, he did a pretty funny recurring character on Two and a Half Men last season, but he had to realize in reading the written lines (I’m not sure I want to call the underlying words for this program a “script,” since it implies professional writers) how insulting this program is to…well, to everyone. Wagner has no problem with his role, basically the same character he’s been playing his entire career, and his short scenes were the only time the show seemed to have any direction. Still, it cannot help but to bring him down with it, and that’s a shame.