Put another way, it's Men in Black meets She's All That with a dash of Mrs. Peel/Steed Avengers (there's a deliberate pastiche of that series' credits). A touch of current Doctor Who, too, in that it's a show whose target audience might be 8-to-12 year-olds, but adults can love as well. So no, originality is not its strong suit, but neither is it American Idol's.
It's wholesome in its way as the milk the title character favors--but he also uses that favor as a device for beating a confession out of a thug. Like Friday Night Lights, a series it otherwise resembles in next to no way whatsoever, what it's about is less important than the way it's about what it's about. And that way is lighthearted, upbeat, and kept me laughing throughout, which is more than can be said for some sitcoms (Two and a Half Men?)
The writing is sharp, the performances, hard to imagine bettered.
As the title character, Matt Keeslar puts just the right spin on his straight-as-a-pool-stick role. "It’s bad apples like you that put Hoover in a dress,” he says, when she shows up for her first day of work in cutoffs.
It's a test of commitment--a lesser performance would constantly be cuing the audience "Can you believe I'm this corny?" Keeslar seems (as the character) really to be this corny, which is the only way it works.
"If there's one thing I hate more than scientists trying to take over the world, it's scientists who twist innocent primates with computer-enhanced mind control to live out their sick and perverted fantasies of criminal power," he says.
Which is a good line all by itself, but it's bettered when Natalie Morales repeats it to him nearly verbatim, asking if it's true that if there's one thing he hates...
As heroine Wendy Watson, Morales has a deadpan Tommy Lee Jones would envy; she's also more gorgeous than he is. Not that Jones isn't a sexy hunk of man in his own right, of course.
It's a hoot, and fun, what else can I say?
Well I can say that based on the pilot, they seem to not be falling into the deep end of pop-culture references in which the last season of Buffy, or Kevin Smith's later flicks, drowned. When you're fighting the aforementioned computer-enhanced-mind controlled primate, what else would you say but "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape?"
(Please excuse all the Planet of the Apes references today...I've been reading Charlton Heston's autobiography)
It's my kinda show. As we know, I'm a sucker for unconventional male/female relationships. I also like that, so far at least, they don't seem to be taking the team down the will they/won't they/when will they path. That can be fun when it works (Bones) but it's become its own cliche (Martha Jones).
If anything, WW has the old Tom Cruise unresolved issues with her dead father thing going on, which maybe MM will help her get over. And I just noticed how their initials are mirror images of each other...cool.
Oh, and Wendy Watson's boyfriend, though a bit of, as the MM says, "a doorknob," is named Ben. This means I got to hear the line, when the heroine comes home and tells her roommate she wants to play video games:
“Speaking of joysticks, Ben’s here."
I was pretty much bound to like it after that line, wasn't I?
(Even if her mother and roommate both think she's only the guy's beard.)
And Mary Jo Rajskub (Chloe from “24”) gets Rush Limbaugh's tounge out of her mouth long enough to do a guest-star part as a scientist.
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