It’s in any series’ best interest, really, to completely envelop itself within its own world and to do so to the best of its ability. In that sense, the show as an entity becomes just as fascinating as the characters within it; the world around them sort of becomes this whole story on its own. Part of the appeal of a show like Mad Men or The Walking Dead—or even a show as left field as Teen Wolf—is that there’s nothing close to being visually similar, no series that nears the authentic conviction dripping from Don Draper and a 60s New York City or a zombied Atlanta or the haunting dark essence of fog and werewolves that hey, I still argue Teen Wolf masters.
I Just Want My Pants Back unabashedly tries this method as its pull for viewers, and the character of Yuppie Brooklyn, New York soaks every angle, every sundrenched or light-fueled shot, every piece of flimsy wardrobe. Its characters are shamelessly hipster, like carbon copies of real live Williamsburg denizens who have an impressive Converse collection and a knack for watching and quoting every movie they know you’ve never seen. They’ve all got this whimsical desire to thrive in a world that’s seemingly ignored them all for the time being, and are in the midst of discovering that there’s a lot of wonderful things in the land of being in your young age with a full libido and nothing to lose.
And Pants’ pilot and follow-up episodes tackle that idea so wholeheartedly and optimistically that it’s very hard not to like it if the humor is your cup of tea. We meet Jason, whose biggest and most tragic worry in the world is wondering when he’ll next get laid and boom- before you know it, he’s railing a girl in his own refrigerator. While he gets her cell, the rest of the hour (and ostensibly the entire season) is spent trying to figure out why he was duped by a fake number, and if he’ll ever see her again. Not to mention, you know, his pants and all.
Then we have his best friend Tina, who has a vagina yet is only platonically interested in Jason (and rightfully so, as even though you have a boy and a girl who are single and sexually deviant, I don’t see any romantic sparks between Peter Vack and Kim Shaw, so I like that we’re not throwing the show in that direction just because the leads are of opposite sexes), and gets into some sexual misadventures of her own, pining for the mysterious Brett (who we will meet in a future episode), while banging an intern she didn’t know was a virgin because she just wants attention, despite the fact that he likes her and we all know that meddling there is no-good-very-bad territory. But after all of that, just for good measure, she banging him again.
In the midst of all this, we have Eric and Stacey, the show’s resident functional couple, who are med students as well as sex fiends, whose biggest issue of the premiere involves having sex on a really dirty mattress. In the midst of struggling to make ends meet (and still looking stunningly attractive while doing it), Pants is a very sexually charged series, more often than not for the pure shock value: when one of Jason’s hookups begs him to stick his finger up her ass, it’s a big moment that both brings you into the show as well as takes you out of it: is this really going to be the type of stuff that Pants is made of?
But I like that about Pants, and I’d like the idea of Pants existing as a series of funny little stories of growing up in Brooklyn and how when you’re that age, the biggest mysteries in life are often the small (and sexual) ones. Where my doubts come in is how long this can last as a series: I’m a big serialization guy, and that’s not what Pants is built around or about, except for a few interjections from this Jane girl as the series goes on. Unlike the heavily plotted Teen Wolf and the equally-storied Awkward, Pants is more the fly-by-night variety, but I’d like to think it’s a worthwhile one. I don’t think I’ve ever been more curious to see how these ratings turn out.
There’s certainly things to like about the characters in I Just Want My Pants Back, but (as I’ve never read the book) a lot more curiosity is sparked in the bigger picture, the David J. Rosen vision of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the show plays like a love song both to that charmed neighborhood and to the younger years of thriving there. It’s an almost too hopelessly cheesy look at life out of college, but it’s an irresistibly relatable one that yes, might be MTV’s most shamelessly blatant attempt to fit in with a youth trend, but it also stands alone as its heartiest.
SumOlogy: “You’re gonna forgive him, right?” “Yeah, it’s Jason.”
Grade ("Pilot") : 8.5/10
Grade ("Baby Monkeys") : 8/10
Leftovers
I do like the character of Tina, but I can’t help but feel like she’s the least genuine of the four. That’s nothing against Kim Shaw, who handles her well, but her lines are too witty and surfaced, and even in her low moments, she’s not as humanized in those troubles as she could.
“I don’t pick up the phone when I masturbate. Unless I’m at work.”
“You need anti-bacterial soap and a barbecue brush.”
“We made love on a trashbag!”
“I’m not religious or anything, I just had a lot of acne in high school.”
“That’s like the best movie starring a sex offender ever!”
“How the f*ck does fruit dance?”
“Iced coffee. My soul hurts.”
“Screw you guys, I know cool bands.”
“Boom. E-vited.”
“Great! Now I look like the world’s tallest baby!”
“You okay, boss?” “Not emotionally.”
“Oh, you exist!”
‘“I was like ‘where is your ear?!’ but he didn’t hear me.”
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