What You Should Have Watched #14

Cancelled Gems #2 – The Good Guys

Okay, so maybe some of these shows aren’t actually gems. Even after five episodes I still wasn’t really looking forward to watching an entire full season of the show.

From Wikipedia:

The Good Guys is an American action-comedy series about an old-school cop and a modern-day detective that premiered with a preview episode on Fox on May 19, 2010, and began airing regularly on June 7.[4] The series stars Bradley Whitford as Dan Stark, a mustachioed, former big-shot detective with the Dallas Police Department, and Colin Hanks as Jack Bailey, a young, ambitious, by-the-book detective who has been assigned as Dan's partner because of his snarky attitude. On December 15, 2010, The Good Guys was cancelled by Fox Television Studios.

I decided to watch this show for two reasons: a buddy at work caught a bunch of episodes when it was on and was amused by it, and I had recently finished all seven seasons of The West Wing and thought that Bradley Whitford could do no wrong. I thoroughly loved him in The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Billy Madison (those were all written by Aaron Sorkin, right?). While he is better than Colin Hanks and has the ability to make Dan Stark a memorable character, the writing is just so cheesy and uninspiring that he just comes across as a caricature. I realize that caricatures can be important additions to shows, especially sitcoms, but it just didn’t work here…at least in the beginning.

It took probably half of the lone season, but you know what? Whitford’s Stark started growing on me. I still think that the writing is cheesy and uninspiring, but Whitford starts to really make it his own. Hanks is still stiff and unlikable, though.

It took me about two months to watch the show. It never got good enough to really engage me, to make me look forward to watching it. I won’t say that it got better the longer I watched it, but I started to enjoy bits and pieces of it a little more. Those bits and pieces mainly centered around Whitford and Jenny Wade. Oh my goodness Ms. Wade. She makes any scene with Hanks in it watchable and downright enjoyable. Although, I've learned via Google's image search that she's got a bit of an off-putting smile. Kinda weird.

Now, I can’t in good conscience recommend you go out and buy the DVDs of this series. But, if you’ve got a Netflix Streaming subscription, well, then you don’t have to spend any extra to watch it. If you DO decide to watch it, don’t go into it with high expectations. Hell, it’s probably best not to go in with any expectations at all.

Also, in case you've forgotten: When I can remember to add this to the bottom of my posts, I’m going to whore myself out with an impassioned plea: click on the ads. PLEASE click on the ads. I don’t care if you exit out of it immediately or actually look around. This isn’t some professional blog where I believe in the products I’m shilling. These are automatic ads placed by Google. But when you click ads, I get a little bit of money, and as a single father of three, every penny from every source helps...especially with Christmas bills here and an unsure/shaky work situation. So I’m going to keep this tiny bit of begging at the bottom of my posts, and I hope you’ll take an extra 10 seconds after reading my blog to click on an ad. The only thing it costs you is time. :) Thanks so much!