In 2021, outfitting a sitcom with a laugh track feels like a clear line in the sand. The post-Office/Arrested Development/Curb Your Enthusiasm era has seen most scripted comedies ditch the decades-old device, and the ones that haven’t are a very specific kind of show: usually aired on network television, usually more concerned with painting in broad strokes than establishing any convincing semblance of reality, and usually produced by Chuck Lorre. (Though, to be fair, Lorre eschewed his preferred medium and many of the trappings, laugh track included, that come with it when making his own move to the streaming giant in 2018.)
But the truth is, there is—and probably always will be—an enormous audience out there for comedy that’s safe, familiar, and sanitized. So while Netflix’s new original series The Crew may have done just fine in an alternate universe as a semi-realistic workplace dramedy, it could also very well find a massive following in its current incarnation as a laugh-tracked, multi-cam sitcom straight out of CBS primetime circa 1996.
The show stars Kevin James as yet another working-class guy named Kevin (surname Gibson), this time a NASCAR crew chief in the garage at the fictional Bobby Spencer Racing. After the namesake owner (Bruce McGill) retires and passes the leadership reins to his millennial daughter Catherine (Jillian Mueller) in the pilot episode, the series becomes a daily cycle of slobs versus snobs/old guard versus new guard battles as Kevin and the rest of his team struggle to come to terms with the shift.
To the credit of series creator/showrunner Jeff Lowell and director Andy Fickman (who helmed all 10 episodes of the first season), the eponymous crew all have distinct personalities without ever veering too far into crass gear-head stereotypes. There’s the pragmatic and salty Chuck (Gary Anthony Williams), his nebbish partner Amir (Dan Ahdoot), and NASCAR driver Jake (Freddie Stroma), who skates by with a charismatic mixture of vanity, boneheadedness, and youthful naïveté. Rounding out the gang is office manager Beth (Sarah Stiles), Kevin’s closest friend and confidant. The cast is charming enough, tackling their roles with an understated kind of ease rather than the exaggeration present in so many other sitcoms. Love him or hate him, James has more or less made a career at this point of playing likable schlubs (with the odd exception every now and then), and Stiles manages to find both a warmth and a bitterness in Beth, giving her character a genuine complexity.
But the characterizations aren’t enough to make up for the fact that The Crew just isn’t that funny. Yes, comedy is subjective, and yes, one’s preference for the jokes here is going to depend on how much they enjoy this particular type of sitcom—a hyper-specific genre in and of itself—to begin with. But the writers’ idea of what separates the young from the middle-aged or the working class from the corporate world feels, for lack of a better word, basic. In one episode, the crew is disgusted by Catherine restocking the break room with healthy snacks instead of junk food. Another plot point finds the team members incredulous that their long-running steak sponsor has been replaced by a company specializing in meat substitutes. There are cracks about the strangeness of any restaurant that isn’t the local bar (the predictably named Pit Stop). There are quips about Instagram. Whether or not the jokes land is irrelevant—the canned laughter stays cranked up to 11 at all times, as if attempting to drown out any dissenting opinions.
Aside from the show’s humor, so much of The Crew’s dramatic tension—what little there is—draws from the threat of unwanted change around the workplace, and that the clashing viewpoints of Kevin and Catherine will soon turn ugly. But because this is, once again, a laugh-tracked, multi-camera sitcom, there isn’t a whole lot of room for evolution. The format has always been custom-made for repetition, allowing audiences to experience the same emotional sensations week in and week out (or, in the case of Netflix, in one greedy binge).
Only in the season’s penultimate chapter is there any hint of a true groundswell in the series’ relationships and workplace dynamic. Until then, it’s episode after episode of minor crisis solved by begrudging compromise. For a show seemingly about the difficulty of change, The Crew is mostly interested in maintaining the status quo.
37 Comments
I don’t see the point in watching this show before they replace Jillian Mueller with Leah Remini.
“No one will notice!”*Executive notes
For my sins I’m a fan of Kevin James, though his success rate is very hit and miss since end of King of Queens. I’ll watch an episode or two of this, but man alive having a laugh track seems so unnecessarily lazy.
King of Queens was stealthy good. And not just because the supporting players (Jerry Stiller, Patton Oswalt, Nicole Sullivan) are better than usual. It was better than the usual ugly guy hot wife show, because the wife was actually awful, but also the show didn’t expect us to side with either one consistently. They were both wrong in different ways. The usual formula is the Kevin James guy is right about the world, the sole voice of reason in a world gone mad, because of young people and their healthy snacks and made up pronouns and Kids These Days. All in the Family was the only show that ever did that well, and even if you watch an episode now, the humor doesn’t really work any more. I’m a successful wonderful guy and everything about the world is awful except me! is a dumb premise. And CBS KEEPS TRYING IT. The only other show I can think of that puts a spin on the ugly guy hot wife usual dynamic is American Housewife. The woman is the overweight, crude, hates the world and is always fighting the awful people in her life, and the husband is the thin, intellectual, voice of reason who shakes his head but loves her anyway. It’s not a good show exactly but at least it’s different.
All in the Family never made Archie seem right. He was the butt of the joke most of the time.
Kevin James strikes me as the typical Hollywood nice guy who’s content to make generic family-friendly stuff, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I liked King of Queens as well, and it’s kind of funny that he seems to prefer going by “Kevin” fictionally, since he was “Doug” in the show, and it was the better choice, given Jerry Stiller’s delivery of “Douglas”.
The few times I’ve caught American Housewife it struck me as kind of odd. The writing and setup-punchline-setup-punchline dialogue is suited for a multi-camera sitcom, but without the studio audience/canned laughter after each “joke” the pacing feels weird.
It’s odd that you bring up Young Sheldon when that show doesn’t even have a laugh track. Plus that show actually has a lot of heart, it’s not bad at all.
Is that you Chuck Lorre?
I was surprised by how good it was, too. It has a Wonder Years feel to it.
People are still putting work into lying about the laugh track on BBT and it isn’t even on the air anymore.
“He’s more laugh track now than man, twisted and evil.”
Now? I’m pretty sure Chuck Lorre was born to the sound of a laughtrack.
Cue “joke” about bitch/overbearing/unloving mom
This series makes more sense when you realize that it was produced by NASCAR. You see this every so often when racing sanctions decide that the best way to force their way into the zeitgeist is by going through Hollywood. For you old-schoolers out there, binge Everybody Loves Raymond sometime and keep a keen eye out for the sudden appearance of Indy Racing League posters, signs, and logos popping up in the scenery.Ironically enough, there was a Forbes article suggesting that NASCAR was the most “transformative” sport over the past year with regards to the changing attitudes of social justice. So go figure.
NASCAR was seriously flagging in interest and the fact that their core demographic was aging white guys in the south, a dying breed, they knew they needed to evolve. I doubt they’ll ever catch the interest of the mass appeal but they’re getting in line with the modern demographics of America faster than other sports which is interesting to say the least. Baseball now seems like the whitest past time as Hockey slowly gets almost a black player to every team but they’re an international league with far fewer black fans overall.
Not sure what point you’re making? Hockey will always be mostly white because it’s played in Canada and Northern Europe. Basketball and soccer are played all over the world, because all you need is a ball and hoop. I don’t think the demographics of who plays professionally has to be the same as who likes it. Sports are businesses, they try to either serve a particular niche or optimise for broad appeal. Or like football, be a big party and concert and cheerleaders and spectacle and rooting interests where the actual game seems largely secondary (college or pro). Baseball has one of the most international rosters of any big US sports, with tons of players from Latin America, Korea and Japan, but their fans in the US are mostly aging white guys. Not sure even young American Latino or Asian kids like baseball.
It was sort a generic non-serious response to the following of baseball’s white boomer fan base issues. Also, let’s not confuse capitalism’s appeal with player base to actual attempts at diversity.
Hang on now, Canada has plenty of diversity (at least in its bigger cities), and I think Northern Europe is starting to go that way as well. There are absolutely POC interested in hockey, and more than a few of them have talked about feeling shut out by a culture that has Don Cherry as its avatar.
Does he just not understand how acting works that he has to have his own name said to him every time or is it a conceit of the original show built around him and how he got to be a huge asshole because of it?
Kevin James feels like he’s built to be forever 70, just nestled into that crappy CBS multi-cam making jokes that are just a hair to the left of Archie Bunker but instead of being satirical he’s serious….
Wait, Archie Bunker was suppose to be satirical?
The name thing worked for years for Tony Danza.
I think it’s a thing when the show is built around a comedian. Jim Gaffigan’s first show had him named Jim. It’s just a weird conceit to the star. Drew Carey is another. But those were shows explicitly built around them as stand ups. Was Kevin James ever more than just the lead in the ensemble with Remini and Stiller?
I think it’s a thing when the show is built around a comedianNot to mention Seinfeld.
And Tim Allen.
Interesting point is that in his new show his character isn’t named Tim though they finally had a crossover episode unifying the universe…
But again, was Kevin James a hot commodity that he needed it to be his show? I’m still trying to figure out where he came from. So, quick research later, I’m in that age gap where I never knew his standup and only know him from his schlubby multi-cam work. CBS really banked on him, having him backdoor pilot it appears with Everybody Loves Raymond into his own show. Which now makes sense, he was a relatively well known standup so him having all his characters named Kevin isn’t strange.
Are those blanked beer bottles in the photo simply scrubbed for promotional purposes, or is this thing seriously so cheap that they can’t afford a prop team to dummy up fake labels/use the same Heisler bottles as every other show in the last 15 years?
Two random guesses:
1. the labels are CGI’d in later, and this is a promo photo, not a still from a shot, so they didn’t bother CGI’ing in the labels2. they CGI’d out the labels because it’s a real brand and they didn’t want to deal with a licensing fee for promo shots
Judging by this picture, it definitely seems like the logo was edited out:
It’s product placement for generic drink-driving. Written and authorised by the Hops Board of America.
The funny thing is it sounds like there’s a moderately interesting premise here. A NASCAR pit crew is, if nothing else, a unique setting for a workplace sitcom, and there are some potentially interesting stories to be told about a new boss coming in to a setting like that and trying to modernize in the face of a bunch of old-school NASCAR types.I’m kind of skeptical a Kevin James sitcom is going to make it work.
(Sorry) I shudder at the thought of laugh tracks for Always Sunny, Curb, or Drunk History. I’m sure some exec wanted to add them in.
It’s kinda sad, watching the death of broadcast TV. The deal used to be: Watch McDonald’s commercial, get ‘Seinfeld’. Now, it’s watch more McDonald’s commercials, get ‘The Bachelor’. But it still tries, but takes no risks. It ain’t got the budget any more.
almost hit play but didn’t because the ranch sucked and i did not want to bother trying to get it off my continue watching list.
I just came to say Gary Anthony Williams is hilarious on the new Whose Line. I’m glad he can get put on a show, even if it’s formulaic. He does have a great NASCAR voice.
Kevin James = Sitcom Poison. Still believe C.B.S. stands for Can’t Broadcast Silly