"Help Me Help You:" Help, indeed
In its premiere last night, "Help Me Help You" squandered the generous audience provided by "Dancing with the Stars" (20 million viewers in its last half-hour), managing 12 million viewers. No new show seems to be clicking on Tuesday: "Smith" was off from its debut, and lost a sizable chunk of viewers in its second half hour, and "Standoff" fails to exploit "House's" audience - if Fox hadn't already axed "Justice" and "Happy Hour," "Standoff's" days would likely be numbered. As is, the show has taken time off to retool. As if that'll help at this point.
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David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place.
I taped "Help Me," and first of all was surprised that it was single-camera. The first 10 minutes worked for me, the second 10 not so much. Once they got out of the group therapy session and the patients were out in the world "trying to make a connection," the whole thing seemed very forced. Once they got back to Becker (yeah, he's still playing Becker) going home, even though he already moved out, and getting into bed with Jane Kaczmarek and her boyfriend (who's also his car salesman ... don't ask), it perked up a bit, but the scene with Danson wrecking his own car just didn't do it for me -- I bailed out of the show right then.
It's got potential, but they've got to either focus on the group together and not so much on their fake outer lives -- the comedy drained right out of the script then and there. MORE LAUGHS, please.
You're right -- your last sentence sums it up perfectly. For a single-camera comedy, there have to be a lot more punchlines in it. As is, there's a lot of dead air. And since that dead air is not filled with canned laughter, the lack of humor becomes more pronounced.