2012 Pilot Preview "Guys With Kids"

Network: NBC
Premieres: Wednesday September 26 8:30pm

So I don’t normally watch a lot of half hour comedies (or comedies in general). I enjoy New Girl and I watched Community for a while, but my interests lie more with drams and procedurals. But I decided to give Guys with Kids a shot. The basic premise revolves around 3 friends; Chris, Nick and Gary who are all fathers. Chris is dealing with his crazy-control-freak ex-wife Sheila while Gary is a stay-at-home dad. Nick is married with an elementary school aged daughter. Not surprisingly, the show is filmed before a live studio audience.

Essentially, the pilot introduces us to the guys, their wives and kids. Chris is kind of stuck catering to everything Sheila says because their son “came from inside her”. It’s not very funny to me but I’m sure some people found it funny. The kids were definitely cute. In a behind-the-scenes clip I watched, we learn just how many babies they have on set to cover all the infants. Something like nearly 2 dozen babies. It’s crazy.

Anyway, Nick and Gary convince Chris to go on a date with a woman he meets at a bar and there is a lot of drama about who is going to watch the baby. Sheila is strictly against babysitters and she can’t watch the baby because she has a date with Kareem Abdul Jabar (we saw him on New Girl this past season as one of Winston’s co-workers. He gets around the comedies apparently). Chris thinks she’s lying about who she has a date with but we see she was actually telling the truth later on. Chris gets Nick to watch the baby while he goes on his date buut Chris eventually bails and almost gets in trouble with Sheila. In the end, he stands up to her and it looks like she isn’t thrilled that Kareem went along with the guys wanting him to “dunk” the baby.

Gary and Nick had their own spousal issues to deal with. Nick was supposed to go with his wife to a fundraiser at their daughter’s school but since Nick decides to babysit, his wife goes alone (well she ends up going with Gary’s wife). Ultimately, Gary makes Nick see that his wife wanted to spend some adult time with him (have a nice dinner and go dancing and not have to worry about the kids for a little while). So when she gets home, Nick dresses up in a suit they dance as if they were on the sinking Titanic (the theme of the fundraiser). Gary, being a stay-at-home dad with four kids just wants a break but obviously doesn’t get it. He does head over with the kids after the wives leave and play on Nick’s Wii (it is kind of amusing to watch the two guys doing a Wii dance game). I’m assuming that sort of tired out the older two kids. Gary is pretty tired by the time his wife gets home but they have a rushed make out scene in the bathroom at the end (that’s all the time they have with four kids to look after).

Overall I found the show to be somewhat funny. The kids were cute (even though they didn’t have much to really do other than be cute). I found the characters to have interesting character arcs established and I think the writers did a decent job setting it up so the viewer wanted to see more. I think some of the jokes and the humor was a bit obvious but that may just be that I don’t watch a lot of comedies and that is the type of humor that gets the most reaction from the audience. I think some of the improv scenes (there was a scene where the guys were out shopping for new threads for Chris’ date) were pretty entertaining. Though with the kids involved, they have to be careful of what they say. There are of course ways to make things fall into an adult brand of humor while keeping it kid friendly (word choice wise).

If I didn’t already have 5 shows on Wednesday nights I might consider watching it beyond the pilot just to see what happens. If I find myself really craving some laughs I might resort to Hulu when I have some extra time to catch up.