Tonight marked the end of the first season of 2 Broke Girls, a CBS sitcom that explored the lives of... two broke women who work at a diner. One is the daughter of a corrupt billionaire who lands in jail named Caroline Channing (Beth Behrs), and the other is just a cynical poor woman named Max Black (Kat Dennings). From creators Michael Patrick King and stand-up comedian Whitney Cummings, the show premiered to high ratings between How I Met Your Mother and the rebooted format of Two and a Half Men. For the most part, the above image says everything that you need to know about the show.
It seems like a weird, strange past couple of months since this show premiered. At the time we were in the era of Whitney Cummings-controlled TV. Not only did she have 2 Broke Girls on her resume, but she also had her own show called Whitney on NBC, which incorporated the live studio audience and embarrassingly fell apart under harsh criticism for being a hack version of her stand-up. This was September 2011. A time when Cummings for a brief two month window, was the next big thing.
While Whitney has fallen into obscurity, 2 Broke Girls has never really faded from the public's consciousness. It's mostly due to it's choice to be as vulgar and in your face as a TV-14 show could. During a press junket, creator King held one of the most awkward, notorious discussions in which he claimed that the characters wouldn't move forward on their quest to rule the cupcake kingdom. Instead, we were treated to them being forced to work with perverted chefs (Jonathan Kite), weird little Asians (Matthew Moy), and a black cashier who really served no purpose for many episodes (Garrett Morris).
The show was pretty much set up for failure from the beginning. It began simple enough with the introduction of Caroline into the atmosphere. In fact, the "Pilot" was a solid, if mediocre look into what the show could be. However, by the second episode "And the Break-Up Scene," things begin to paint itself clearer: the chef is still horny, the Asian is weird, and Max is just a cynical woman who talks about her vagina and breasts at leisure with some double entendres mixed in.
I mostly watched this show because I was a naive fan of Kat Dennings the actress. In recent years, she has produced quite a bit of work that I have enjoyed, including Charlie Bartlett, Defendor, and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. I found her to have some credibility that I wish would have been present in this show. However, simultaneously, I was aware of the other names attached. Michael Patrick King's most recent effort, Sex and the City 2 was an extended example of rich white women being stupid in Abu Dhabi with plenty of stereotypes and smutty humor to back it up.
I knew this, and yet I had hope that things could get better. I was aware that I needed to give up on Whitney almost immediately once the first two episodes made me groan. In a way, 2 Broke Girls was just a more vulgar version done at break neck speed. I cannot count how many times I heard them make jokes about coming, as in the sexual act. It seemed like a recurring theme.
Most of all, the show rarely felt like it progressed. While you had characters who had a bond that seemed to move forward every five episodes, the rest of the show revolved around pointless stereotypes. They sold cupcakes to rich women, Jews with ego problems, and they even wore costumes that had crotches worn out from periods. I'm not kidding. It's all there for your laughing amusement.
The truth is that I kept watching because of Max and Caroline's relationship. In the world, they were annoying. Somehow whenever they tried to interact with others, they immediately got shot down with stereotypes that were so broad that the laughs merely came from inept obviousness. It is also annoying when Max's cynical humor, mixed with vagina jokes, is forced to come up with insults that feel forced, and at times, cheap.
This is not the worst thing to come out of a sitcom last year, but it's the most disappointing investment that I have made. I had faith that Kat Dennings would be written better. She wouldn't just be insulting hipsters and dealing with stereotypes. I wanted the relationship with Beth Behrs to develop into something. There were hints, but it was still lazy writing. As the final reel of each episode involving how much was invested into the cupcake business, most episodes simply stayed the same number. This show suffered because it had no progression in the right places.
To say the least, I think that everything else suffered as a result. Max became annoying and Caroline kind of a shrew. While there were hints that the supporting cast was given personalities, the third party characters were still broad and annoying figures. This is a flawed world filled with entendres, jokes about coming, and a cupcake business that should have been more relevant in each episode. In 24 episodes, the most that they achieved was an understanding of who they were as business people, not actual investors.
Most of all, there was one additional character that popped up in the last eight episodes. Was it by popular demand? Who wanted this character? Take a look from this clip of the addition of Jennifer Coolidge.
This show has single handedly been responsible for my doubt of so many people. While I have never been a huge Coolidge fan, it seems like I now hate her. While her appearance in "And the Upstairs Neighbor" was tolerable, she still had that atrocious accent, dumb blonde sex jokes, and what felt like pointless chemistry. She ended up with the chef towards the end of the season. It's weird because it made the chef a more normal character, but Coolidge more of a drag.
As the season came to a close, I decided that it would be a good idea to reflect on what I had just seen. How does this leave me? In truth, I continue to weep for Garrett Morris' previous greatness on Saturday Night Live. It makes me hate Jennifer Coolidge. It makes me respect Lena Dunham's Girls more in that it may lack minorities, but when networks can't do it right, do we want a show about white girls in New York suffering from that? No. This show isn't necessarily a failure because of it's bad scripts. It's more because it never developed a world worth caring about. Even the central characters, who were once charming, were stuck in enough smutty situations to lose interest.
Most of all, it makes me question why I even liked Kat Dennings. Were those roles in the various projects just a mirage? Why do I come away from this show feeling underwhelmed and at times groaning at her jokes? I blame the creators for sticking to the lowest common denominator and lowbrow laughs. While I applaud the decision to give these characters intimate moments to care, they don't fit with the rest. They haven't gone anywhere progressive in the season or added any characters worth mentioning.
So, in closing, 2 Broke Girls feels like the show CBS wants to typically go for, and because Michael Patrick King is smut-man 101, he'll be adding smut to every good moment of the following season. Right when things get going, I am thrown a minority with wild personality disorder that takes me out of the moment. I think that I cannot be accused of not trying to like this show. However, King and Whitney Cummings made it an endurance test, and I don't think that I will continue to test it.
The show has at best mediocre episodes with some laugh out loud moments. I even find Kat Dennings to have been charming at some points. But it isn't enough. I will leave you with this clip from "And the Very Christmas Thanksgiving," which I feel shows how the sentimentality in this show is sideswiped by a face palm.
Favorite episode: And the Hoarder Culture
Overall Rating: 1.5 out of 5
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