I am – Hercules!!


Is Fox trying to revive “Get A Life” without the great Chris Elliott?

"The Winner" is a new Fox sitcom about a balding thirtysomething who works a menial job and still lives with his parents. It’s even set in the 1990s. But are creator Ricky Blitt (“The Ringer”) and producer Seth MacFarlane (“Family Guy”) funnier than Chris Elliott?

They are not. “Get A Life” was weird genius. “The Winner” is intolerable crap, loaded with clumsy, obvious, trite jokes and slathered with a laughtrack that finds every half-baked gag hilarious. Its star, “Daily Show” vet Rob Corddry, can get more real laughs per minute without a script, so one hopes he was paid well to be associated with this drivel.

But what matters Herc’s opinion?

Variety says:

… Fox sent out five episodes of this new sitcom, which proved instructive, because the more you see of it, the less there is to like. … plucks every familiar man-child chord, then begins plucking them all over again. "Daily Show" alum Rob Corddry can be flat-out funny, but this series from "Family Guy's" Ricky Blitt and Seth MacFarlane ultimately proves too cartoonish to live up to its title. …

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… Publicity for "The Winner" celebrates the series as a coming-out party for Rob Corddry … It might be premature to start popping the cork, though. The half-hour sitcom gives Corddry a chance to display his considerable comedy skills, but within an odd and somewhat icky framework. At the same time, stories from creator and writer Ricky Blitt are annoyingly similar from one week to the next. There's something ominous about running out of fresh ideas in the second or third episode.…

The New York Times says:

… It’s a bust … Set in Buffalo, the comedy presses its provincialism way too hard, leaning on exaggeratedly square, out-of-it diction best exemplified by the haphazard uses of definite articles — “the Alzheimer’s,” “the smack” — that Jon Stewart wore out some time ago.…

The Chicago Tribune says:

… If … “The Winner” has a few grating elements, they’re not Corddry’s fault. Overall, the new Fox sitcom is surprisingly winning, and the skilled Corddry is the main reason. …

The Philadelphia Inquirer says:

… It's a travesty that the scripts [Corddry] has to work from are such big, fat losers. … You can only hope that Blitt, a first-time executive producer, will tire of middle-school humor and move to something a little more satisfying for grown-ups. …

The Washington Post says:

… Fox's show "The Winner" is probably the most mistitled sitcom of the decade. It never rises even to the level of worthlessness, occupying a territory beneath rock bottom, a sub-sub-subterranean realm where puerile bad taste is passed off as, of course, edginess. …

The San Francisco Chronicle says:

… unintentionally stupid. Insipid, poorly written and saddled with an onerous laugh track, "The Winner" is lame even by Fox's standards. On Sunday, everyone will be able to see that for themselves -- and you have to wonder if Corddry doesn't already know how dreadful his own show truly is. …

The Miami Herald says:

… Smutty at its best, downright creepy at its worst, this dreadful attempt to mock the coming-of-age genre could well be the first TV show to get an entire day of the week canceled. …

The Boston Globe says:

… Oh me, oh my. "The Winner" isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, and it's sad to see Corddry pour his likable comic style -- a form of ironic cluelessness -- into such a feeble and misguided project. …

USA Today gives it three stars (out of four) and says:

… It's a minor miracle The Winner works as well as it does, considering how easily it could have gone disastrously wrong. …

TV Guide says:

… Fox, which does well with animated comedies, is overdue a live-action winner. The network may finally have found one in the unlikely form of a balding, bumbling, giggling, socially maladroit perpetual adolescent named Glen Abbott, who is also the season's most original comic hero. …

9:30 p.m. Sunday. Fox.

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