The Unicorn (Thursdays at 8:30 on CBS; Premieres September 26)
I realize I'm in the minority here, but I don't particularly see the appeal of Walton Goggins. He was good on Justified, of course, but he likely wouldn't be anywhere near the top of my list of best working TV actors right now, and he certainly wouldn't be someone I'd expect to be leading a sitcom on CBS. That, coupled with a rather lackluster pilot script that barely even tries to be funny, The Unicorn is the first new series of the 2019 broadcast season I watched, and it's also the first I won't be returning to for a second episode.
Wade Felton (Goggins) is in a rut. His wife died over a year ago, and he's still feeding his two daughters, Grace and Natalie (Ruby Jay, Makenzie Moss), sympathy casseroles from their freezer. Worried that he'll never move on with his life without their help, his friends, all married couples, stage an intervention to get him back out there and coerce him into signing up for a dating site, on which he's immediately popular. Wade is apparently a "unicorn:" a single man without the baggage of a midlife crisis or divorce, but rather an attractive, sensitive man who is single not by choice but by pitiable circumstance (and the fact that he's only slept with one person in two decades doesn't hurt).
That's about what we get from the pilot: a lot of setup. It's a slow introduction, and it doesn't really lean into the comedy like you'd expect. The Unicorn (ugh, that title) is actually more a tender, 22-minute, light family drama than a comedy. There's a scene where Wade all but has a nervous breakdown upon taking the final bit of food left over from his wife's funeral out of the freezer; a scene where he catches his teenage daughter exploring her burgeoning sexuality; and another where he confesses the fate of the family cat to his kids, much to their horror. Even the scenes that are played for laughs, most involving the circle of friends led by Delia (Casual's Michaela Watkins, doing her usual thing), are nearly devoid of one-liners and zingers and true comedy; they're more quirky than funny, and that's just not my thing.
Bill Martin & Mike Schiff's script is full of heart-tugging scenes, but for every sweet moment there's an equally perplexing one. For every touching moment where Wade gets flustered and confused about dating or parenting, when we genuinely start to feel for him, there's a ridiculous explanation of what a "unicorn" is (which, correct me if I'm wrong, but there are probably plenty of men dating on these sites that are widowers with brown eyes) or trying to draw laughs from the fact that the large family dog likes to sit on the kitchen counter. The script is so maudlin that it actually becomes what the protagonist rallies against: Wade does not want to be a man defined by the tragedy of his wife's death, yet it's his only defining trait, the only thing anyone in the pilot talks about. It's the wrong kind of irony for a comedy.
The mediocre content is occasionally lifted by the cast, especially Rob Corddry (a four-time Emmy winner for Childrens Hospital) and Watkins. The rest of the supporting cast gets little to do: Maya Lynne Robinson (The Conners) plays a stereotypical sassy black mom, the young girls play good-cop, bad-cop to Wade's decision to date again. It's fairly unassuming stuff. Even Goggins, who I'm assuming is the draw here, barely rises to the challenge in a role in which he feels mildly miscast. Plus it was hard for me, personally, to take the premise of the whole show seriously when everyone is commenting on how hot Wade is, when I don't find Goggins attractive in the slightest. (That's subjective, obviously, but it's a large part of buying into the show.)
When it's all said and done, there's just not a whole lot grab onto here. There are scenes that make for a fine, cute family show, but there's not much humor in it. If you're a Walton Goggins fan, you'll probably find a lot more to like than I did, but a show about a single dad going on dates isn't exactly in my wheelhouse, and the pilot of The Unicorn didn't do enough to convince me that I should stick around and hear what it has to say.
Comments
Post a Comment