Does "Mulaney" seem like a cheap Seinfeld ripoff to anyone else?

If what they are showing in the commercials is the best there is to offer, it won't last long.

Glad Seinfeld is still on everyday.

 

Based on the trailer, I certainly won't be watching. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZSe7V02oLI

 

First thing I thought when I first saw a promo for it.

 

The star comments:

Mulaney was asked how the show came about. “I just watched Seinfeld and copied it,” he snarked. “It’s on all the time, so it’s easy.” Then he said he thought it would be “cool” to do a comedy that drew from the sitcoms he grew up on “with my sense of humor – my sensibility…Two years later we’re here (with) an updated version of an old-school sitcom with maybe a weirder bent to it, and I hope I accomplished that.” He described his comedy style as a ” little cynical but hopeful as well…I always face the day with a smile, and then various things happen.”

http://deadline.com/2014/07/john-mu...dy-mulaney-martin-short-elliott-gould-806789/

 

Well, they'll never find another George Costanza, or more specifically, Jason Alexander. Without him, Seinfeld would be half the show it was. George is getting upset!

 

Ripoff, yes. Cheap? I doubt it.

 

Copied? Not quite. It needs to be funny to be a copy. That looks embarassing.

 

Too bad Nasim Pedrad had to leave SNL for this turkey.

 

Does "Seinfeld" seem like a cheap "It's Garry Shandling's Show" ripoff to anyone else?

 

I like John's standup act, I think I'm gonna give this the benefit of the doubt - I will definitely watch the first few episodes before passing judgement.

 

I will, too. Anything with Nasim Pedrad and Martin Short has my attention. It has a good timeslot after "Family Guy" so maybe it will be given time to grow.

 

The worst thing to me is that Fox is airing it Sunday night after Simpsons and American Dad. So much for "animation domination"...

 

Worst thing to me is that people are bashing a show they haven't seen.....

I'll say this- Mulaney is a funny guy, very clever in his standup, and if half of it translates, it'll be good. Plus the fact that they are stacking the show with talent is a good sign- Martin Short and Elliot Gould are in it. Mulaney wrote some good skits at SNL in his day and that's really all a sitcom is nowadays, a longer skit. I'll give it a chance and watch before I judge which seems like the right thing to do..

 

I liked Mulaney's stand up special -- it's on Netflix -- and he wrote SNL's Stefon monologues, so he has comedy credibility for me. Which is why I'm puzzled by the clips I've seen of his sitcom, which make the show look very old fashioned and hacky. I'm surprised he would go for the multicamera format -- though maybe that wasn't his choice?

Sitcoms need time to find their rhythm, though, and they often seem funnier once you get know the characters than they do when you watch a scene out of context. So maybe he'll figure it out.

 

Has this show aired yet?

 

October 5th.

 

Not getting much love from the critics.

Seinfeld famously described itself as "a show about nothing," but it had a very specific and funny point of view about the minutiae of life, and in time developed a classic structure where the episode's various storylines would converge to make the whole stronger than the sum of its parts. Though Mulaney the stand-up has a clear point of view, "Mulaney" the sitcom does not. It's a show about nothing, with nothing to say about that
...
Jerry Seinfeld famously wasn't a good actor, and the show had fun with that at times, but when it was just him in the coffee shop with Elaine or George, he came across as a human being having a conversation with other human beings. Mulaney always looks uncomfortable, his line delivery is stilted and unnatural, and that adds to the sense that Mulaney is less a sitcom than a vaguely lifelike simulation of one.

 

USA Today: “Lacking much in the way of attitude, the show seems obsolete and irrelevant. What it boils down to is that Seinfeld, likable as he may be, is a mayonnaise clown in a world that requires a little horseradish.”

That's a review of the first episode of Seinfeld. How'd that work out?

 

It worked out well, mainly because of the 'supporting' cast ensamble.

 

The point being, forget what "critics" write...

 

Why? It's a good source of information/opinion in lieu of show availability, especially if you've followed certain critics over the years whose views largely intersect with your own. I've also seen trailers which haven't filled me with much confidence.

But whatever, I don't have skin in the game, just reporting the current 'vibe'. If it becomes a success, then fantastic.

 

The current "vibe" of a show that hasn't been broadcast yet....one critics opinion doesn't form a "vibe." LOL...Seinfelds first show got negative reviews and ended up one of the most beloved show in TV history. The Big Bnag Theory was BLASTED by critics initially and look where it is now.

Here's a piece of a review of Breaking Bad before it debuted:
"It’s the pacing that makes “Breaking Bad” more of a hard slog than a cautionary joy ride. It has good acting, particularly by Bryan Cranston (“Malcolm in the Middle”), who blends Walt’s sad-sack passivity with glints of wry self-awareness. But the misadventures of Walt and his slacker sidekick, Jesse (Aaron Paul), are a picaresque comedy filmed at the speed of a tragic opera — jokes, visual and verbal, are slowed down from 78 r.p.m. to 33 1/3 by an underlying earnestness, as if it were a foreign art film set in the American Southwest. [A] “cult hit” still seems the most that the creators of “Breaking Bad” can hope for. A mondo-bizarro, dark-as-midnight, bitterly bleak tragicomedy, the series premieres tomorrow night at 10 on AMC and all but busts a gut straining to be edgy and grim."

NY Times review of Home Improvement:
"Mr. Allen's sitcom may well work, although by the second episode it already shows uneasy signs of cuteness bloat. [17 Sep 1991]"

Newsweeks review of Home Improvement:
"Memo to ABC: Toss out Tim, make the [neighbor] the central character and retitle this mess "Hormonal Improvement." You're welcome. [9 Sep 1991]"


>>The point I'm trying to make is that you read a negative review, and believe it to be true, then post it in a public forum, and others read it and believe it's true, all of you having never even seen the show. Sometimes these critics don't even watch the entire show, movie or listen to the entire album before writing a review.

A review of Jimi Hendrix Axis Bold As Love album:
""Jimi Hendrix sounds like a junk heap...his songs too often are basically a bore, and the Experience also shares with Cream the problem of vocal ability." (Jim Miller, 4/6/68 Review)

And enjoy this critics view of "Hey Jude":
"Hey Jude" is the text of a sermon on truelove, delivered to the world at large and more particularly to John Lennon on the occasion of his finally "making it better." You see, beatlefans, John has had a kind of un-together scene with women, if one can judge by the songs he's sung about them (& I believe one can)...So what happened next was that John remembered to fall in love with a beautiful Pornographic Priestess and they are at present living happily ever after...And now back to this song which is full of good advice (probably already taken) to break the old pattern...For the pedants among us, I offer this additional fodder for intellection: in the Christian legends there are, besides the two Johns, two Judes. One is supposed to have been a brother of Jesus and the other is the well known Iscariot, betrayor of Our Lord. An Eggman and a Walrus. Libra Lennon, the Duality Magnate, has just been righteously gotten together by the absolute interchangeability of the symbols for Good and Evil. Their name is one, and "don't you know that it's just you?" Incidentally, the "praised" (saint) Jude is the Patron of that which is called Impossible, and there is your souvenir copy!" (Catherine Manfredi, 10/12/68 Review)

>>Again, a critics review is simply their opinion of something, not a definitive answer. As we all have different tastes and styles, no one critic shall speak for all of us.

 

The 'vibe' wasn't derived from a single review, I merely referenced one of them. The reviewers have had access to several episodes too. But, whatever...

 

It worked out well because NBC gave it time to develop. The first episodes showed glimpses of what "Seinfeld" would become, but taken on their own we had no reason to expect a sitcom juggernaut. The pilot especially awkward and bland -- similar to how some critics are now describing "Mulaney." The "supporting cast ensemble" would have had nothing to work with if Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David didn't have a unique, hilarious way of looking at the world.

Critics can get it wrong sometimes, but sometimes they're entirely accurate about the quality of a show's first few episodes. To me, the point is that you should watch for yourself, and decide if it's a show you want to watch, or even might grow into a show you'd want to watch.

 

To me, the point is that if someone (a critic) can be right sometimes, and wrong sometimes, then their "educated" opinion isn't worthy of listening to- simply for the fact that it's an opinion. Would you listen to an electrician that was right half the time? How about a mechanic? What about a surgeon? Would you hope he's better than right "sometimes"?
We should strive to form our own opinions based on facts, and in this case, watch the show, and see what it is about. Some people will form an opinion on a show because of negative reviews, not bother to watch it and miss out on something special, or come in late to the party.