Adulthood, in itself, isn't very funny. And it's very rare that a series like Friends or Seinfeld can correctly inject a groundbreaking dosage of humor into the mundane details of being working men and women: the sense of discovery is gone, the making light of things you don't know has faded, the foolish ways of thinking aren't productive in the world of cubicles and docs. When a comedy manages to hit a good nerve, it usually does so with memorable characters in unique situations, making those people jump out of the screen—out of the show, even—and become instant staples. But more times than not, these prolific characters are earnestly stupid, because nothing is quite as funny as catching someone blissfully unaware of how life really works.
And no one's more humorously ignorant of the rules of life more than the high schooler, which is why MTV's The Inbetweeners—an Americanized adaptation of the British hit—might be the most earnest and gratifying attempt at a comedy series this year. There's something different about a young situational comedy in the waters where hits like New Girl and Workaholics thrive: channeling the spirit of being young and still a little stupid, and fusing that with the pains of growing up. Life's a lot funnier when you can just make up the things you don't know and wholeheartedly believe them, which is where a lot of the humor (which might be 75% sex jokes) from last night's pilot episode lives: Will Mackenzie (played by Joey Pollari) is demoted from his cushy private school to a crusty public one, where he meets Jay (Zack Pealman), Simon (Bubba Lewis), and Neil (Mark L. Young), and they've already careened off a cliff into the lands of drinking, ditching, sex, and love as they ditch school to "impress the ladies". The ladies who are currently in school while you're ditching. Right.
None of them really have a huge understanding of what any of these things mean, so they naturally take their advice from the guy who talks the loudest, the endearingly delusional Jay. Jay's a kid who's never had sex—and all of the boys seemingly know he hasn't—yet they still take his wildly inappropriate quips about being "deep in bush all summer" and "going in deeper than the balls" as irrefutable, because it's not like they know any better themselves. Where love-struck Simon will happily admit he doesn't know much about how to win over Carly, Jay overcompensates by believing he knows just about everything: the key to getting a girl's heart isn't the effort you put in, it's the amount of booze you can down beforehand. The result is that Simon, clearly sauced, heads over to Carly's and in the middle of professing his love for her ("we're meant to be together!" he barely utters), pukes all over her kitchen. And her little brother.
And I see where those one-liners could get a chuckle coming from How I Met Your Mother's Barney Stinson or New Girl's Schmidt as bragging rights in front of their peers. But there's a different tone when it comes from a boisterous, ballsy 16-year old who legitimately has no clue what he's talking about. It's rude, sure, but the bravery in his bravado is also admirable, and the three comrades follow his lead of having that same sense of blind smarts. As Will and the gang showcase, it gets them both into and out of trouble, and all four of The Inbetweeners leads will harness that courage as it's constantly pummeled—just like in real high-school—by endless amounts of public humiliation.
Refreshingly enough, The Inbetweeners is one of the few shows that will legitimately make you pine for your old high school days; where so many series—even the one Inbetweeners shares the strongest link with, MTV's Awkward.—overdramatize what it means to be a teenager, most of these shows tend to forget one of the major parts of transitioning between kid and adult: gaining the beginnings of who you'll be as a person often requires a lot of ball-busting, a lot of making up what you don't understand, a lot of being recklessly brave for stupid reasons, and a lot of mistakes. And if you put all of that together, and do it right, high school is a hell of a lot of fun. The Inbetweeners channels that gradual loss of innocence and young sense of discovery better than any teen series in quite a long time.
SumOlogy: So wait- who WAS that guy in the van?
Grade: A-
Leftovers
I can't speak enough about how much I love both the character in Jay (Zack Pearlman) and the actor in Bubba Lewis (who plays Simon). Jay's funny all-around, and Simon's utterance of "we're meant to be together" had me, literally, laughing out loud. Before he puked on Carly.
Simon and Will are both very similar, and I think it'll be interesting to see how to foursome works with half the characters being relatively sensible, though just as loony.
"Library closed due to budgetary constraints." HAH.
One of the things I hate that a show does in a pilot is over-explain what's happening (a way of filling the user in that would never happen in real life), and this thankfully only happened once with Carly and Simon. I'll take it.
I love a random intrusion of Lil' Jon's "Get Low".
"I spent the entire summer trapped in beaver."
"Personally, I like to go in past the balls."
"Stop saying 'molest'." "I can't!"
"You got cool muscles!"
"If you tested my piss right now, it'd be like 80% coke."
"Girls like being told guys like them. Just be direct and spray paint it on an overpass."
"Do I have to do heroin?" "It probably won't hurt."
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