Perfect Couples (NBC – Thursday, 8:30 p.m.)

“Perfect Couples” is a romantic comedy that follows three flawed pairs trying to get it right.

Dave (Kyle Bornheimer, “Worst Week”) and Julia (Christine Woods, “Flash Forward”) are the “everyday couple,” messed up in all the “normal” ways. Dave struggles to keep both his wife and his needy best friend, Vance (David Walton, NBC’s “100 Questions”) happy. Vance and the volatile Amy (Mary Elizabeth Ellis, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) are the high-passion, high-drama couple who bring out the best and worst in each other.

The third duo features Rex (Hayes MacArthur, “She’s Out of My League”) and Leigh (Olivia Munn, “Attack of the Show,” “The Daily Show”). Rex is a reformed party guy who has channeled his jock energy into a competitive drive to be the ideal mate. Leigh, a self-anointed relationship guru, has formed the perfect union with Rex, and now considers it her duty to mold the other couples in their image. – NBC

3 out of 10

You will NOT see Olivia Munn looking like this on Perfect Couples.

We freely admit it: the only reason that we even bothered to watch Perfect Couples is because it stars former G4 Attack of the Show hottie, Olivia Munn.  It was partly curiosity to see if she could actually act (she was always very funny on AOTS) and partly because of the very likely chance that she might wind up in her bra and panties or at least a bikini at any moment which is generally the fall-back position for network television nowadays when it comes to generic scripted television.

Needless to say, we were disappointed on both counts.  Munn kept her clothes on throughout the entire pilot and to make matters worse her acting appears to leave a lot to be desired.  Now, we are being generous with that assessment by using the term “appears” because, she may not be a bad actress at all, it may just be an issue of incredibly bad writing because everyone’s performances were terrible.  Munn’s problem is that she has no real résumé to refer to outside of AOTS and the majority of her dopey lines were simply repeating the lines of her character’s husband.

Aside from what we will refer to from this point forward as the “Munn Disappointment,” there’s really nothing good about this show.  As noted, the writing is horrible.  The jokes don’t work, the timing isn’t there and it is completely predictable.  The characters are horrible cartoon versions of real human beings and completely unbelievable.  The show literally feels like aliens have come to Earth and this is what they think American couples are like based on something they read in a magazine or saw in a really awful romantic comedy that most likely starred Matthew McConaughey.  It tries to be clever and relatable and fails miserably.

Perfect Couples: Written by aliens? Perhaps.

You may have noticed the over-abundance of Olivia Munn pics in this piece in various states of undress.  Unlike the producers, we decided that we needed to do something to make Perfect Couples interesting and actually utilize its only asset.  This show is pretty bad all the way around.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any short trailers for this so if you watch the video you’ll be forced to endure 4 minutes and 31 seconds of propaganda by the cast about how great this show is.  Don’t believe them… especially when Christine Woods tells you that you know couples like this.  You don’t.  You’ve never seen any couples like this ever because they don’t exist.

Watch full episodes of Perfect Couples, here… if you must.

Fall 2010 Post-Game Wrap-Up (Thursday)

Welcome to part four of the mid-season 2010 – 2011 review. In this post we’ll be discussing Thursday’s programming.

8:30 p.m.

CBS – $#’! My Dad Says

Well, it certainly is $#’!-ty. After watching one episode of $#’! My Dad Says we determined that not only is the worst show of the new season, the worst sitcom we’ve ever seen but perhaps even the worst show in television history. Just to show that we were fair and objective, we endured three more episodes of this awfulness… our opinion has not changed.

It’s currently a bubble show right now which makes us lose all faith in humanity that anyone is watching it but CBS did cut short the episodes it ordered for the Spring so hopefully this will go away by May.

If you haven’t read our review of $#’! My Dad Says we highly recommend it as we consider it more of a community service than a review… like an intervention for people addicted to bad TV.  Read it here.

NBC – Community

Community is still one of the better sitcoms on television (there are only a handful) and currently it’s a toss-up between whether or not NBC will renew it for a third season. In our estimation, it should be renewed if for only the reason that it’s been relatively consistent on Thursday nights and there’s nothing on the sitcom horizon for NBC in the near future. We hope so. It’s the type of show you can turn on and just laugh at because of its ridiculousness. It’s one of our two Thursday Night guilty-pleasure. The second one is, of course…

9:00 p.m.

The CW – Nikita

We love Nikita and we really shouldn’t because it’s a mediocre bordering on terrible show. But it’s over-the-top campy goodness is something that keeps us coming back for more every week. The premise is beyond ridiculous and the performances are almost silly but there’s so much “pew, pew, pew” that we can’t stay away from it.

There’s another reason why we have a soft spot for this puppy and it’s not because Maggie Q (Live Free or Die Hard) looks incredibly hot in a bikini. It’s because we heart The CW. A show like this could never survive on major prime-time network but The CW and it hearkens back to the late 90’s with UPN when they would take chances on shows like The Sentinel, Nowhere Man and our personal favorite 7 Days.

These shows, like the shows on The CW can thrive on very small audience numbers compared to the other major networks. There is no chance that camp like Nikita could ever survive anywhere but The CW and for that we are thankful for The CW. There is only ONE show that will not be renewed (that isn’t in its planned final season) on The CW next year (Life Unexpected). That’s just awesome.

NBC – The Office

Well, we’ve been concerned about this for a longtime but it’s official: The Office just isn’t as funny as it used to be and it has run out of steam. It’s still enjoyable but it’s not nearly as funny as it used to be. It’s really jumped the shark as evidenced by the fact they are resorting to revolving around another sitcom (the Glee viewing party episode). C’mon, now.

We’re still watching because it certainly has its moments, and actually, the aforementioned Glee episode was pretty funny although we cringe at the concept in principle. That being said, no one has anything to be concerned about because it’s certain to be renewed for next Fall.

9:30 p.m.

NBC – Outsourced

Outsourced is one of the most disappointing shows this season but it’s not because it’s a bad show. It’s cute and it’s clever but it’s a sitcom trying to be funny and it’s really not. We pointed out in our review that the problem is that the novelty of the culture clashes and funny accents only works for about ten minutes, yet Outsourced is an entire series that revolves around those gimmicks.

A couple of months ago we saw the 2006 film of the same name and we realized that there’s a reason why the film doesn’t translate to a sitcom: the film wasn’t a comedy to begin with. Yes, there was humor to it but he film was really a character driven story about how despite different cultures may be, we’re really not all that different after all. Sitcoms don’t work with the touchy-feely any more like they did in the 1980’s where there were a bunch corny jokes and Alex P. Keaton and Vanessa Huxtable learned a valuable lesson at the end of every episode. Audiences today want their sitcoms to have the most laughs possible during the course of 21 minutes and that’s really what it’s about it.  Whatever lessons are to be learned are secondary.  Outsourced the series, like the film, is focusing more on the valuable lessons with the comedy as an afterthought.

If we’re going to watch a sitcom, we want it to be funny. Outsourced unfortunately is not. It’s currently leaning toward “the-more-likely-to-be-renewed-than-not” category but we doubt audiences are going to continue to tolerate it until May.

Next, we take a look at Friday’s programming.