It’s a tough call — but somebody’s got to do it.
With two dozen new series debuting on TV this fall, we got down to business and singled out the absolute worst new show of the year.
Our choice: “Guys with Kids,” created by Jimmy Fallon’s production company for NBC.
First things first, we excluded all the shows that were designed to be bad: dating shows, reality shows filmed in any kind of store or office and everything on The CW.
A show had to be trying to be good to make the list. We have standards, you know.
So, why did we pick “Guys with Kids”?
We like Fallon a lot — a hardworking late-night guy, brilliant mimic, funny awards-show host.
And don’t forgot those Capital One commercials. He’s good with the baby.
But on Fallon’s “Guys With Kids,” the jokes are about how babies get in a dude’s way.
“Staying home with kids is the hardest job in the world,” moans Gary (played by Anthony Anderson) who bathes his babies in the kitchen sink and meets his fellow dudes at a sports bar.
In the bar, they all carry their infants in baby-bjorns and bump them together after every touchdown.
Get it? Even though they’re taking on traditionally maternal responsibilities, they haven’t forgotten that they’re guys!
The divorced dude, Chris (Jesse Bradford), watches “GoodFellas” with his infant son on his lap, covering the baby’s eyes during the murder scenes.
Every joke seems to ask the same question: How can a cool guy like me be doing this?
The women in the lives of these dudes (Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Tempestt Bledsoe and Erinn Hayes) traipse in and out of scenes just often enough to convince us some of these guys actually have wives — though you have to seriously question what kind of mother would leave her kids with these guys.
As genres go, the “dude-com” seems hugely out of date. Who’s going to watch a show like this? The dudes are at the sports bar, remember?
No lessons learned here from last season’s dude-coms “Work It,” where the guys dressed up as chicks to get jobs in a bad economy, or “Man Up,” where three guys sat around and talked about what it really meant to be . . . a guy.
That leaves only Tim Allen, the granddaddy of dudes, to defend the clueless guy character on ABC’s aptly named “Last Man Standing.” And his ratings are so lackluster, he’s been moved to Friday nights.