My Big Fat Greek Disappointment

We watched the TV show My Big Fat Greek Life Monday night. (One fewer thing to clear off the TiVo when we get home.) Christina and I had seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding last summer, and we were looking forward to an inventive, entertaining TV show.

Yeesh. What a letdown. Afterwards, we found ourselves debating between "painfully bad" and "uncomfortably bad." I'm not sure I can pinpoint exactly what went wrong, beyond most of the jokes falling flat.

Well, I think another problem was the poor characterization. The movie worked mainly on the strength of the rich characters. On the TV show, the characters seemed reduced to sitcom stereotypes. Maybe we were supposed to carry over our memories of them from the movie. But if that was the case, why did the pilot revolve around a gag (her father buying them a house) that was repeated from the movie? Anybody who saw the movie could figure out what was going on.

Pilots generally don't work as well as later series episodes. Partly the actors and writers need time to get to know the characters. Partly the auidence needs to go through the same process. We'll give it another week; I just hope all the good stuff wasn't used up in the movie.