Unhitched

When I was eight years old, Dumb and Dumber seemed like the perfect movie.

It had slapstick, gross outs, and that guy who played Fire Marshall Bill on In Living Color–everything a prepubescent boy could want. The director-writers, the Farrelly brothers, followed their debut with a string of funny, but dumb, comedies such as Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary. For a while in the mid-90s, the two Rhode Island-born brothers were the go-to guys for easy laughs.

Then everything went south. The brother’s brand of slapstick became increasingly dull. Their funny streak ended with Shallow Hal, an achingly unfunny movie starring the inconsistent Jack Black. Things got even worse with Stuck on You, which blew the semi-promising premise of Greg Kinnear and Matt Damon as conjoined twins. Between the Farrrelly brothers last three or so films, I could probably count the number of genuine laughs I had on one hand.

Now the Farrelly brothers have thrown their hat into the realm of television with Fox’s Unhitched, a sit-com about three recently divorced friends (all dudes) and their single attorney friend, Kate. As you might’ve guessed, the show is about the plight of 30-year-olds who are awkwardly wading through the Boston dating scene. The hope is that maybe, just maybe, hilarity will ensue. It almost does.

Jack is the show’s main character. He is a smart, successful man with the tendency to surround himself with “wacky” friends. First, there is Tommy, a frat boy grown old, who seems to be trying not for a wife (his fourth), but for skanks of all varieties. Dr. Freddy Sahgal is the “na’ve foreigner” of the group, with a vaguely Indian sounding accent, and what looks to be a spray-on tan.

The show, like The Office, is shot using a single-camera, opposed to the stale, multi-camera sit-coms of old. But Unhitched may as well use the old format because it doesn’t utilize any of the techniques that make single-camera better, like dynamic movement, or varying shots. I even assumed, after the first five minutes, that a laugh track would be included.

While the Farrelly brothers only direct and produce the new sit-com, it is a continuation of their brand of humor. But is it an improvement on their work of the last six years? Not really. If you plan on counting laughs with your fingers, don’t plan on using your thumb anytime soon.

UnhitchedSundays at 9:30 p.m. Fox