Today’s Review Review

I’m a big fan of reading reviews. I am, in fact, a lapsed amateur reviewer myself. And with the new fall lineup on the horizon, most entertainment websites are chock full of new reviews, previews, pre-review previews. And so it was that I found myself reading a review on E! Online for NBC’s upcoming new sitcom “Whitney.”

Full disclosure: I have no plans to watch “Whitney.” Just doesn’t look like my cup of tea. But what got me worked up enough to bore you all with my thoughts isn’t how bad I think the show may or may not be. It’s how despicable this review is. I’ll be summarizing. You can find the full review here. Let’s start at the beginning:

So how does Whitney handle the age-old story of a couple maneuvering their day-to-day life? Turns out, there is something in the show everyone can relate to, plus a couple things you might not understand, but still laugh at anyway…

Translation: We acknowledge upfront that the premise of this sitcom is rote, at best, and possibly incoherent, but stay with us here.

Meet Alex and Whitney’s circle of friends: sickening-in-love couple Neal (30 Rock’s Pancholy) and Lily (Lister-Jones), bitter single girl Roxanne (Seehorn) and Mark (O’Brien), a sexually enthusiastic (read: horn dog) cop who’s got a pocketful of sexual puns. We’re fairly certain every group of friends has at least one of these characters in ‘em, so it’s tough not to chuckle at the gang’s back and forth.

Translation: Yes, the show is full of stock characters, but come on. They’re just so darn normal. You’re guaranteed at least a chuckle, the smallest possible expression of amusement that can still qualify as a ‘laugh.’

Now check out the following phrases that are peppered throughout the next few paragraphs of the review:

“…a situation rich with potential shenanigans…”
“…the whole role-playing bit is pretty funny…”
“Groundbreaking premise? Of course not. Plenty of opportunities for comedy? Absolutely.”

Notice anything? Because all I see are qualifiers and descriptions of things that could, at some point in the future, be funny. The review is capped off with this whopper of sentence:

So…the format is bad, the jokes are telegraphed and predictable. But the show is also…still…funny…ish?

Verdict: Watch. You’ll find out right away if this different take on a relationship sitcom is for you. And a lot of viewers are starved for funny women on TV.

Again, this is not a criticism of the show. But something about this review seemed off to me. It seemed like the person who wrote it was trying, quite concertedly, to like, or pretend to like, something that they didn’t really care for. So I did a little research and everything clicked into place.

“Whitney” is produced by Universal Media Studios, which is the production arm of NBCUniversal. NBCUniversal is the parent company of NBC (of course) and (surprise!) E! Television, the network behind the review. This is obviously a case of someone writing under duress, either under the direction of a corporation looking to protect its interests or out of fear for any possible retribution that might result from a negative review of said corporation’s new show.

Listen, I’m not saying that E! Online is some kind of beacon for solid journalism. But the simplest rules of anything purporting to be ‘news’ require that you disclose a conflict of interest. Anything else is a cynical underestimation of your readers, at best. Is it worth it to get his worked up over an article that shares page space with ‘Ab Alert! Ryan Gosling Gets Mistaken for Ryan Reynolds?’ Probably not. But it’s crap like this that pisses me off.

Networks are making a habit out of treating their viewers like morons. The average American viewer deserves better than a corporate shill. Or at least someone who has the guts to look their bosses in the eye and tell them that they made something that wasn’t funny.