Rate/Review the Sit Down, Shut Up pilot

[TriforceBun]

Tonight, the new animated series helmed by some of the Arrested Development regulars premieres. Centering on a set of quirky teachers, can this show with the somewhat-impressive pedigree eventually find a permanent spot in Fox's animation lineup? Or will it sink like so many Stressed Erics before it?

Only time will tell, but for now, rate/review it here.

[Tyler]

Well, for the first tiem in a while, a new animated series premiered tonight on FOX. I didn't see a press release for the pilot, so what I gathered was:

Every teacher is scared because the new replacement principal threatens to fire one of them.

R/R here!

My review: Much, much better than I expected it to be! I actually enjoyed most of the characters, especially Willard Deutschebog, Sue Sezno (which, although I expected to be bad, was actually voiced quite nicely by Kenan Thompson), and some other teacher I've already forgotten the name of.

Much more raunchy than I thought it would be as well. From the opening 'nuts' joke to some stuff near the end. Great first episode. I enjoyed Tom Kenny's terrorist-ish character as well. The live-action backgrounds are very interesting, sometimes taking my attention. Need a re-watch to specify more stuff. Anyone know if it'll be on Hulu?

Anyways, 4/5. Great series so far. Looking forward to next week.

[The Sovereign]

this one wins, but only by a minute

[The Sovereign]

you lose by a minute


plus no poll....

[Tyler]

yes, poll.

[Tyler]

haha, only by a minute? triforce bun...

could a mod merge both please?

[Redem]

A bit too all over the map for my taste (maybe future episode will have more focus), while there was no really painful moment, it just lack punch

[keith stone]

Like I said in the other thread, what an odd, odd episode. 2/5, but it's the pilot, so I'll give it a chance.

[Gatorgod]

.... eeeh, I'd actually take a KOTH rerun over this

[Captain Squid]

Too many characters, subtle jokes that are funny but not laughable. I'll give it another chance, but I wasn't too impressed.

It had a very late 90's animation vibe. Like "The Critic" or "Dr. Katz".

[arii]

So we're using this thread, then?

Um... I dunno. I like the voice cast, like, a lot. It was funny enough for the most part but I was a little put off by... it did feel all over the place, like Redem said. I guess they were just trying to establish all of the characters and introduce them to us? The idea that one of them could have been fired was a good way to do this but that wasn't executed all that well (I was actually surprised that there even was a football game at the end).

I'll still go back and try out a few more episodes because something is there, but it just wasn't really there in this episode due to the lack of focus, I bet.

On the plus side, I thought the animation on top of live action backgrounds was going to be fucking terrible, but I really ended up liking the look of it. Kudos.

[Tyler]

i have to say, the voice cast impressed me as well.

[Dave Shutton]

I couldn't even finish the episode, I had no idea what was going on and it just wasn't funny.....at all. I did kinda like the whole real background thing, at least it was something different

1/5

[Xt'Tapalatakettle]

Copied from the other thread:


Some stuff here felt like it tried to be edgy, but wasn't working. It did have some good zingers and some wit to it, but it was a bit too bizarre on the whole. There were quite a few instances where they were very self-referential and it almost reminded me of Clerks: The Animated Series in that respect (not sure if that's good or bad). Nonetheless, I'm not sure a show where a main characters grows boobs in its inaugural episode is starting itself on the right foot. However, jokes like the Salman Rushdie joke were pretty funny.

[Chou]

It definitely did try too hard; practically every other line was an "edgy" joke. It wasn't terrible, but most of the jokes weren't working for me (though I thought the stuff concerning Happy was amusing). The pilot didn't really find a rhythm-- it added too many storylines in for the sake of an introduction, so it felt a little messy in result. I was also not fond of all the characters' names being so obvious and "punny. The characters are all seemingly one-note, which can be okay for comedy depending on the execution, but...I dunno. I'm indifferent to the cast so far; it's too early to really get a good sense of their characters (the voice acting was good, though). The pilot was disappointing, but I'm willing to give it a second chance next week.

[Semaj]

This was quite a let-down. Not that I had high hopes for this, but this got off on a pretty bad start.

The live-action backgrounds is apparently the one visible evidence of how it was originally concieved as a live-action series, and was probably used anyway to save a butt-load of money.

Storywise, the only thing that garnered any real interest was Kenan Thompson voicing Principal Sezno. Everything else felt like a pretty hollow effort to piece together a show, moreso a controversial one.

No one needs a catchphrase. Just a prayer that this lasts beyond the end of the season.

2.0/5

[sean]

i wasn't expecting this to be the next coming of arrested development or anything, but seriously? this was lacking almost everything that made ad good, and was chock full of the few things in ad that sucked (constant self-referential 4th wall breaking, bob loblaw-style "funny" names, etc). i'll give it a while to maybe gel, but this could be a train wreck

[Sniper Squirrel]

really unimpressive, way too many characters, didn't laugh once

[Mean Mr. Mustard]

This was bad. The characters are just too crazy to care about all the way down to their names. The live action backgrounds just made it look cold and cheap to me. There was funny moments, mostly thanks to the talent of Will Arnett and Will Forte, not because of the writing. I will give this show a few more chances since Josh Weinstein is involved and it has a good cast (except for Kenan Thompson and Cheri Oteri). The premise of the show is not horrible, it just should not try to be so wacky and all over the place.

[Dark Homer]

it was alright but it had way too many meta jokes

[Ryan]

I think I liked it more than other people did, though I even recognized it's no Arrested Development. However, it has that thing called "definite potential".

Though there is no way in hell this will get a second season. I just can't see it...

3.5/5 (rounded up to 4/5)

[Kiyosuki]

I'd hardly even call the humor in this subtle. They might as well have the characters say "this joke is by -insert writer'" after every line. It's humor that feels the need to explain itself in detail right after which is a writing gimmickcopout starting to get irritatingly overused. Especially with eco-nut science teacher and the german teacher.

I don't want to pass judgement just yet though, because the biggest thing it really had going against it was that it felt like it was trying to be the pilot....establish everything etc. I think we should see if it gets some more focus, though the pilot is supposed to have a great hook. It shouldn't be this broad and "bit of everything" unless it has a really focused premise to begin with. So maybe I'm being nice to it because of its writing staff. I mean, what's with the catch-phrase fixation? I feel like it's some sort of self-referential joke that just went over my head.

I really hope it improves, but it hasn't really impressed me. So far it's self-indulgant meta humor, every archtypical modern TV personality from sassy black fat woman, to flamboyant drama teacher (the only thing is they actually made the PE teacher the sane one for once.), and well..."economy animation". Maybe it's intentional, but it'd better make it work soon.

[Godfrey]

I think I'll wait a few episodes to really make a judgement on this series...I enjoyed it in a way, but not, you know, in a way that I believe it'll be a great series. It has some potential, I think, but where or not it'll actually turn out funny is another question.

It does have this going for it: The Florida school system deserves to be parodied.

[Kiyosuki]

The American k-12 system in general is a parody.

[Nico32]

I watched it last night and wasn't really impressed, some gags were funny like the teachers names, the nut sack joke, and the German teachers porn secret, but wasn't really appealing. I'm gonna give it a few more episodes to look for improvement, but so far I give it like a high 2/5

[Neptune]

I enjoyed it. I wasn't all that into the background. But there were some good jokes in there. The weird teacher who says "I need a catch phrase" was the best part of the show. (though I'm sure he'll never say it again) Hopefully the show will last, although I'm sure it will be cancelled soon because the world, for some stupid reason, seems to only want to watch crappy McFarlene shows.

[TriforceBun]

I thought it wasn't bad, actually. The first half was pretty strong, I thought. Regarding some common complaints, the plot did indeed feel a little all-over-the-place, but I didn't feel that there were too many characters. They were all new to me and I didn't have trouble keeping up with who was who or what they were doing. Honestly, I got several laughs out of the show, which is more than I expected.

The developments later in the episode sort of felt half-baked, though. The romance between the P.E. coach and the spacey science teacher feels like it's going for a shipper Jim/Pam kind of thing, but doesn't really have any interesting chemistry since he clearly thinks she'