The number of real laughs in a sitcom is generally in inverse proportion to the number of overly loud inexplicable gales of laugher on a laugh track.
Fox's The Winner isn't, which could have been the entire review of the sitcom's debut Sunday night, like my favorite review of 1955 film I Am a Camera: "No Leica."
The show is trying too hard and succeeding far too infrequently. Cordrey was great on The Daily Show, but he was pretty unfunny in last night's show.
Some of the lowlights included a reference to Herve Villachez's suicide: "He shot himself in his little, bitty midget chest," says Glen Abbot's (Cordrey's) mother. Then there were the references to checking your urine, painting swastikas on lockers, a guy who shot himself at work and the classic line: "Let's get married so you can comb my hair and touch my cans."
The comment by the 12-year-old kid about maybe needing condoms so he could sleep with his 12-year-old date while Cordrey sleeps with the kid's mother was a real thigh-slapper.
It did have one good joke: "What do you call a French Canadien who flies a plane?…….A pilot, you rascist."
Fox used promotional cut-ins with a guy commenting on how the show was progressing, asking first if the show was tanking, though I think it was to supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. "I'm thinkin' this might make it past six eipsodes," he says in a later cut-in, obviously having not actually watched the show.
If you are over 30 and don't have downs syndrome, says Cordrey at one point, there is something wrong with working in a video store. If you are under 120 and can stomache this show, there is something wrong with you.
By John Eggerton
