MARRY ME: Tuesday 9PM on NBC
Previously… on MARRY ME: Annie (Casey Wilson) and Jake (Ken Marino) are a longtime couple who have finally become engaged. That unleashes a whole new set of neuroses in them, which they will weather with their friends, recently divorced Gil (John Gemberling), vain Dennah (Sarah Wright Olsen), and lesbian Kay (Tymberlee Hill). Also on hand: Annie’s two dads, both named Kevin (Tim Meadows and Dan Bucatinsky).
Episode 2: There was exactly one gag in the second half-hour of Marry Me to remind fans of the late, great Happy Endings that creator David Caspe was behind that show too, and like the best moments of Happy Endings, it was entirely random: a desultory yet ceremonial musical number performed in the middle of the night by the staff of a 24-hour buffet restaurant to commemorate the nightly changing of the soup. The B story of the episode, written by Caspe and Co-Executive Producer Erik Sommers, and directed by Seth Gordon, concerned Gil’s decision to enjoy his unmarried state by doing things his ex would never have allowed, like going to a buffet and refusing to leave, and there’d been a reference earlier in the episode to his having seen the ceremony, but to actually write and choreograph the song was a delightful, unexpected touch.
That minute, however, was all fans got. The rest of the episode was a labored affair that confirmed the impression of the pilot that unlike the ensemble antics of Happy Endings, Marry Me will fundamentally be The Casey Wilson Show, showcasing her character’s well-meaning but overbearing eccentricities. Here Annie was uncomfortable when Jake moved in with her and started taking up her space and changing her stuff, and advised by her dads to find her “happy place,” she moved into her car. As in the pilot, Jake and the other characters were basically her straight men, and both the show and the Annie-Jake relationship felt unbalanced. Instead of being a romance between two matched crazy people, it’s all about that nutty gal. Wilson is very funny, and she was a bright part of Happy Endings, but that show worked because there were 5 other strong comic characters around her. It didn’t help that the emotional explanations for her behavior were spelled out pedantically in the dialogue, or that Jake was a cliched “guy” in the episode (as soon as he moved in, all he wanted to do was put his giant-screen TV up on her wall), or that Gil is interchangeable with the other heavy-set friends that the heroes of Mulaney and A to Z have been given as an accessory, or that the C story, which had Dennah overreacting to a teenager thinking she was 40 years old by freezing her face with Botox, was little more than a single, unoriginal sight gag.
Happy Endings took a while to find its comic footing, and the good news for Marry Me is that it’s been given a strong lead-in from The Voice that helped it premiere with a strong rating last week, and will allow it to have some time to improve. We know that Caspe has the talent and comic voice needed to carry a series, and the hope is that he’ll re-adjust his elements here and the show’s spark will ignite. (The fact that he’s working this time from semiautobiographical material–he and Wilson are actually engaged in real life–may be holding back his wilder imagination.) Marry Me is a show worth rooting for, but it’s not yet ready for the altar.
ORIGINAL VERDICT: If Nothing Else Is On…
PILOT + 1: So Far, Something Borrowed and Blue
About the Author
