• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

A to Z |OT| A Romantic Comedy about a Copywriter With One Nipple and a Dead Mother

Status
Not open for further replies.

AlphaSnake

...and that, kids, was the first time I sucked a dick for crack
I've mostly been incredibly disappointed with this show, but I want to talk about this anyways.

1) not sure I see any resemblance to Go On.

2) Lydia (Big Bird) is very reminiscent of BOT's Veronica, but IMO very much the dime store version. I'm not even sure why that is. Both bosses have a spacy disconnection from reality and have a semi-plausible internal logic to their dumb ideas. Both have unshakeable confidence. But something about the difference between the two shows' similar characters makes Veronica awesome and Lydia terrible.

Also, Stuff is The Worst and he's also all over the Wallflower plots. BOT didn't have a Stu.

I would say the two techie characters are a decent knockoff of BOT's Lem and Phil.

In no order of relevance, Go On had this very campy feel to it with a very eclectic surrounding cast. The frequent outdoor scenes in California add warmth to the show, as they did in Go On. Ryan was a romantic who lost his wife, while Andrew is a hopeless romantic who lost his mom...which ultimately served as the catalyst for his romanticism. The two shows are really not very much alike on paper, but I pick up a similar tone occasionally between them both.

And yes, obviously Better Off Ted was a different kind of comedy presented in a much different fashion, but you pointed out the obvious traits of why I made the comparisons (the two head geeks + the crazy boss).

Lem and Phil were such an epic duo.
 

G0523

Member
Stu and Stefy are awful characters. Something about Stu's lips really bother me too. I liked the leads but man were their best friends just plain stupid and wacky for the sake of being stupid and wacky.
 

beat

Member
In no order of relevance, Go On had this very campy feel to it with a very eclectic surrounding cast. The frequent outdoor scenes in California add warmth to the show, as they did in Go On. Ryan was a romantic who lost his wife, while Andrew is a hopeless romantic who lost his mom...which ultimately served as the catalyst for his romanticism. The two shows are really not very much alike on paper, but I pick up a similar tone occasionally between them both.
Interesting. I thought at its best, Go On had a melancholy tone that acknowledged its cast had all had serious losses they were working through. At its worst, it was a wacky sports radio show featuring the other side of Ryan's life*. Come to think of it, tonal mismatch is also a complaint I've had about A to Z.

* I even liked all the actors and characters on that side. It was just... bad plotting and too many characters to service in one show esp because the work characters had few reasons to interact with the support group characters.
 

beat

Member
(vaguely patterned after Patton Oswalt's bit) Hey, do you like Andrew and Zelda? Well, here's an entire episode about Andrew and Zelda...'s sidekicks!
 

Tagg9

Member
(vaguely patterned after Patton Oswalt's bit) Hey, do you like Andrew and Zelda? Well, here's an entire episode about Andrew and Zelda...'s sidekicks!
I actually thought the last episode was one of the best yet. No stupid Big Bird plot.
 
Gah, I just started watching this show and I am in love with it... Why did the show have to get cancelled :( I guess i will just enjoy the fact that they are at least finishing airing the season...
 
Did anyone else watch the series finale?

I was a little let down because im wanting to know what happens to stop their relationship... but there was no closure since at the end it said they still had 4 months 3 weeks 5 days and 6hrs left

Outside of that I thought it was a good episode.
 

beat

Member
I watched this. The last episode was better than a lot of the ones that had come in the middle.
 

AlphaSnake

...and that, kids, was the first time I sucked a dick for crack
Yep. The show's canceled. Yesterday's episode was great. It was a great concept, but I think NBC did a poor job marketing the show.

As a result of doing this show, we lost Ginsberg as a Mad Men character forever. *sigh*
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
I can't believe they couldn't just give it a full season to finish the alphabet even if they crammed more letters into single episodes. It seemed like a concept that could have worked well as a single one-off season.
 

Fuzzy

I would bang a hot farmer!
I can't believe they couldn't just give it a full season to finish the alphabet even if they crammed more letters into single episodes. It seemed like a concept that could have worked well as a single one-off season.
It was doing horribly in the ratings. Nobody was watching it and they're lucky it was allowed to air the 13 episodes.
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
It was doing horribly in the ratings. Nobody was watching it and they're lucky it was allowed to air the 13 episodes.
Community's season 5 finale tag was so right. NBC is incompetent when it comes to marketing its shows now. This show should have been on ABC or CBS.

Oh well. Hopefully Milotti gets another chance elsewhere.
 
It was doing horribly in the ratings. Nobody was watching it and they're lucky it was allowed to air the 13 episodes.


It was a new show and they cancelled 4 or 5 episodes in... I hadn't even heard about it until 2 weeks ago...

I wish they would have gave it more time for ratings :(

Community's season 5 finale tag was so right. NBC is incompetent when it comes to marketing its shows now.

So true.
 

Sober

Member
Decent way to end the series I guess. Should've left the narration out at the end, cause it seemed to work better on the last scene alone. But I'm not Ben Queen, so...

I still think Selfie was the best of all the now-dead rom com attempt of this TV season (YTW survived tyvm).

Also Dreama Walker showing up just made me miss DTTB so much more. :(
 

Fuzzy

I would bang a hot farmer!
Decent way to end the series I guess. Should've left the narration out at the end, cause it seemed to work better on the last scene alone. But I'm not Ben Queen, so...

I still think Selfie was the best of all the now-dead rom com attempt of this TV season (YTW survived tyvm).

Also Dreama Walker showing up just made me miss DTTB so much more. :(
It's like you're reading my mind on all points.
 

beat

Member
Yep. The show's canceled. Yesterday's episode was great. It was a great concept, but I think NBC did a poor job marketing the show.
I agree; it was a great concept: boy meets girl, they hit it off, let's see how their relationship plays out.

NBC bought that show, and then they what they got was episode after episode of garbage about Wallflower with a cut-rate Better Off Ted's Veronica. There were a couple of episodes that actually got the episode title from the sidekick's plot. Which to be fair those were the A plots, but ... why were the sidekicks getting the A plots??? And none of it was funny! To be fair, the Andrew-Zelda stuff wasn't that funny either, but at least the leads had chemistry. Really though, through most of the episodes the two shared next to no screen time together. Even if the action onscreen was about the central relationship, most of the time it was Andrew talking to Stu or Zelda talking to Stephie about it, instead of them talking to each other.

I'm happy to watch an ensemble show, but A to Z wasn't supposed to be Happy Endings. And A to Z wasn't good at writing or performing ensemble comedy stuff anyways.

I still think Selfie was the best of all the now-dead rom com attempt of this TV season (YTW survived tyvm).
You're The Worst puts every other romcom sitcom far in the shade. (Could also include Ground Floor which debuted last year and is actually pleasant, but not remotely inspired.)

And you know what? YTW actually focused the show on the main couple! The thing that gave their pilot some energy? They kept going with it! (If you haven't watched You're The Worst yet, do it as soon as you can.)

Also, YTW's sidekicks were way better than A to Z's. Stu was a relentlessly horrible man-child almost the entire time, and Stephie was a very, very stock romcom sidekick character.
 

Sober

Member
Selfie = shit pilot, great enough run I'll defend it (seriously episodes 9 and 10 were some of the best half-hours last year save Louie and all of YTW)
A to Z = great pilot, kinda missed the mark on some episodes

basically

Also Manhattan Love Story = only beats YTW in a single instance because one episode involves white people literally comparing the paycheques their dad writes them as a B plot. otherwise, forgettable if not just bad.
 

TripOpt55

Member
Here at the end, I feel pretty much the same as I did every time I've posted in this thread. The concept was cool. I like the way the show was constructed (the A to Z thing, the tease of this certain amount of time for their relationship, the narration). The leads are very good and have great chemistry. But the friends are pretty terrible and the boss at Wallflower is awful and they spend way too much time on those characters. And it is very rarely actually funny. Ends up being a pretty forgettable show.
 
The friends would've worked out ok if they were just done in smaller doses. I would've liked to see the dysfunctional IT couple in more episodes. Both the actors are great and I like how they could be juxtaposed with the main characters.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom