Despite having an enormous budget, seemingly endless promotion on all of CTV's properties and on billboards, bus stops, etc, and a cast headlined by Kids in the Hall and NewsRadio's Canadian golden boy David Foley, that also featured big name guest stars... this show was an enormous flop.
The basic idea of trying to bring back big budget U.S. style multi-cam sitcoms was absurd to begin with. They simply could not compete with the flash, the style, the budgets, the talent, and even if they could, they were already very much out of style.
When season one hit the air it was quickly apparent that the show was a disaster. The characters, outside of Foley and a couple of the women, were horribly written and performed. The guy who I think is supposed to have been gay is truly a candidate for worst sitcom character of all time. They tried so desperately to make him funny, and it was so hard to watch.
How the much hated series got a second season is beyond understanding, unless that was the plan all along and it was already paid for. But even though you'd think it couldn't get any worse, it did. Not just the comedy they were making, or failing to make, but everything the show touched seemingly. Season two was supposed to premiere after the Super Bowl in what must be just about the best time slot in existence. But the show was pulled from the air after Bryce (actor J.P. Manoux) was arrested and charged with voyeurism after the women subletting his condo got suspicious after his texts kept seeming to indicate he knew where they were and when, then discovered he had hidden cameras in the place, which were connected to the internet. He ended up being found guilty of mischief, but the season still aired eventually.
The reviews were savage (at least the real ones that weren't promoting the show for CTV's corporate masters). Word of mouth was universally not just bad but people took some kind of sick pleasure in breaking down how awful their brief experiences were in trying to watch the show. Like a car wreck we knew it was awful but just could not look away. We tried to guess how many tax dollars were lining the pockets of the lucky stiffs who were making this show. (Can't blame Foley, he deserves whatever money he got and did a capable job with the nothing he had to work with.)
One final note to explain my unabashed hatred of this show as I write this six years later, I personally went to a taping and it was literally so unbearably bad that my friend and I had to lie to studio staff to escape. We said we had to get her medicine from her car and would be back, then didn't look back. The staffers actually tried to herd people on our bathroom break and physically blocked the doors to prevent any of us from leaving, in other words they obviously had this problem regularly. We literally were afraid that they would stop us at the gate and send us back, isn't that insane? Just imagine how bad that taping was that we were trying to escape it like prisoners from jail haha!
That's what happens though when you have people show up, show them over half an hour of clips from previous tapings on small TV screens (why?), then make them sit through a terrible comedian telling jokes (why?), then make them sit through set changes and scenes we could not even see or hear from our seats (why any of this?). What we could see was not funny anyway, so I'm not even complaining. It was just such a bizarre and unpleasant experience.
The novelty of seeing David Foley in real life wore off after five minutes and then we decided to abandon our plan to try to get a picture with him after the show and just wanted to leave and get some food. They kept us there for more than three hours and the live studio audience almost revolted, demanding food or to be let go. They tried to bribe us with cheap cardboard tasting delivered pizzas, but we finally had enough and made our escape. You can only sit there, hungry and bored while watching TV show staffers laugh at their own terrible, snail paced show and eat good food right in front of you for so long.
One thing I definitely noticed that afternoon-evening was, the decent performers were the ones who were not laughing and just happy to be there getting paid, they were the ones who looked embarrassed. That was not a coincidence.
As you can probably tell from reading this, that studio taping is one of the biggest disappointments of my life. We thought it would be cool and fun TV magic! No way, it basically felt like we'd been kidnapped. My friend's friend who did stick it out told us the entire process ended up taking more than five hours and did not get any better.
The TL/DR? The show was a terrible idea, the few really talented people they had were wasted completely and the writing and jokes were quite awful. The show was a disaster in every area and should have been canceled, no actually it never should have been made.
Hopefully David Foley will be back starring in another show soon that actually deserves him.
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