Is it a show birthed from the movie, or is it merely a coincidence that Friends with Benefits shares the same unfortunate name as the recent film … which sounds exactly like the other recent movie No Strings Attached … which sounds exactly like so many other plots that have come before but wisely chose to be less transparent when selecting a title?
Regardless of what came first — the show’s been bouncing around for a few years, so who knows — I’m not sure what differentiates NBC’s latest from so many other shows where characters sleep around … okay, maybe they spend slightly more time discussing it here. But you should know that Friends with Benefits wasn’t my first choice for this week’s column. Rather, it was a last minute choice after I started watching my selection and couldn’t make it past minute ten. So sorry Teen Wolf!
I get that Ben (Ryan Hansen, who looks much better with short hair), and Sara (Danneel Ackles) are the friends the title refers to, but it would be fair to say that everyone on the show is looking for a similar, no strings attached relationship. And yet there’s a certain kind of person who wears that well: Justin Timberlake, Ashton Kutcher, Adrian Grenier. Not dopes like Ben, who’re too dumb to realize that “bury the beef” might connote something inappropriate (as stupid as that segment was), or guys like Fitz (Andre Holland), who you can instantly tell is a monogamous guy.
I can see Riley (Jessica Lucas) letting loose like a Rosario Dawson or Megan Fox character, but Sara? The doctor who would have killed herself in high school to get into a good college, killed herself in college to get into a good medical school, and then spent six to eight years killing herself for a great residency? Who so obviously wants to be in a committed, stable relationship? She’s sleeping with her buddy Ben because she’s just so desperate to be having sex regularly? Nope.
The guest spot by Chuck’s Awesome (Ryan McPartlin) in the first half hour didn’t help the episode (or him), but I did like Fitz and Aaron’s (Zach Cregger) roommate thing that was going on in the background. I actually think that, with some minor tweaks, Aaron’s a great character who could be dropped into any number of sitcoms. The second thirty minutes saw him going a bit too geek, but then they also didn’t do much for Fitz.
In episode one Fitz seemed like a normal guy with an unoriginal problem (my friend makes lots more money than me). But by the second episode he’d morphed into a mini Ben, running around during the few short weeks that his girlfriend was away in an effort to score a couple more notches in his belt before settling down. That said, I did enjoy his mission to get all the pictures from the party taken down, even if I still totally don’t understand why people feel the need to document everything they do in life online. Are social events so boring these days that we need to occupy ourselves by constantly checking in with our online personas? And if they are so boring, why are we sending live updates about them? I don’t get that.
Anyway, Friends with Benefits is harmless enough … but it might make you lament all the stuff you could have been doing in the time you spent watching it.
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Aug 23, 2011 @ 13:36 EST5EDT
See, I adored Zach Creggar on Whitest Kids U’ Know, and I didn’t mind him in the couple episodes I saw of this. It’s pretty harmless sitcom fodder, and probably better than most of the sitcoms out there. I think the problem is that most of the sitcoms out there are pretty bad.
*POST AUTHOR*
In the first episode Cregger’s Aaron was a reasonable example of a socially stunted character — save for the wealth — that we see all over today. But when he and Sara’s date Kyle got together in the second episode he was a bit too over-the-top, all to set up Sara’s ability to keep saying “not you, Aaron” while she insulted Kyle and his ilk. He was better the first time when he stuck to fighting with Fitz.
Yeah, WKUK is better. If you haven’t seen the skit show, there are some videos on youtube. Check out the Creggar as Abe Lincoln skit.