Take Me To The Pilots '11: CBS' 'How To Be A Gentleman'

[In case you’ve Forgotten, and as I will continue to mention each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews will be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots.]

Show: “How To Be a Gentleman” (CBS)
The Pitch: “It’s a reverse Pygmalion with a buddy comedy twist… Or something.”
Quick Response: “How To Be a Gentleman” is the last of the fall pilots to get the Take Me To The Pilots treatment. I did a half-dozen midseason shows earlier and the reason for that is that I had more to say about those shows. I had more to say, in fact, about almost every single show ordered for fall or midseason. But that cuts both ways. “How To Be a Gentlemen” is just very “meh,” which doesn’t mean that it’s dreadful, but it also doesn’t mean that there was anything about it that I latched onto as memorable. Part of me likes to think that the whole series is just a Pygmalion episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” in which The Gang somehow was able to train David Hornsby’s Rickety Cricket to become a gentleman and then rather than pulling the rug out from him at the end, they just left him in unnaturally civilized shape. But since it’s Cricket, we all know that eventually, he’s going to bottom out again. As it stands now, “How To Be a Gentleman” is a comedy that needs to be let loose, that needs to stop wallowing in a core premise that’s at least 15 years behind the cultural curve (something about a GQ-style magazine attempting to fight off the Maximi-ization of society). It’s unclear how much of the ongoing premise is going to be about Hornsby’s character’s week-to-week efforts to change Kevin Dillon’s lunkheaded trainer (and vice versa), but I’m not sure who will be served by sticking to that formula. As it stands now, this is the sort of sitcom you can imagine Johnny Drama [Dillon isn’t asked to flex any new acting muscles] landing in the finale of “Entourage,” but it isn’t the type of comedy that’s going to make proper use of Hornsby, Rhys Darby, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Nancy Lenehan and David Foley. That’s a lot of comedic fire-power and while it isn’t entirely squandered in the pilot, nobody’s got the sort of character initially capable of utilizing them to their full potential. But in addition to being a funny in-front-of-the-camera guy, Hornsby had a long run as a writer on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” so I have at least some confidence in him and his ability to recognize the value of the full ensemble here. Eventually. I don’t know if “How To Be A Gentleman” quite fits after “The Big Bang Theory,” but I’m guessing it could be smarter than the shows that aired in that time period last year, not that “Feces My Dad Says” and “Rules of Engagement” raised the bar very high.
Desire To Watch Again: I’m curious. And it’s a time slot in which I end up being generous, once I’ve already watched “Big Bang Theory” anyway (and with the NBC comedies either frequently available via screener or else easily accessible OnDemand in a way that CBS comedies rarely are). But it’s hard to get excited by something this average.

Take Me To The Pilots ’11: CBS’ ‘How To Be A Gentleman’