In 2021, equip a sitcom with a laughter trail it looks like a clear line in the sand. The post-Desk/Development held/Curb Your Enthusiasm era saw most scripted comedies abandon the device for decades, and those that didn’t are a very specific type of show: usually broadcast on television, usually more concerned with painting in general lines than establishing any convincing appearance reality, and usually produced by Chuck Lorre.
The question is, as tempting as it may be to categorize something like Young sheldon because it’s outdated, it’s still a more intelligent, subversive and general entertainment show, like, say, Pen15 into the stratosphere in terms of classifications. There is – and probably always will be – a huge audience for comedies that are safe, familiar and sanitized. So while the new Netflix original series The Crew may have done well in an alternate universe as a semi-realistic dramatic comedy in the workplace, but it might as well find a large following in its current incarnation as a sitcom with multiple cameras and laughter out of CBS prime time around 1996. Never mind that even Lorre avoided his favorite medium and the pitfalls that come with it (laugh track included) when making your own move for the streaming giant in 2018.
The show stars Kevin James as one more working class guy named Kevin (surname Gibson), this time a NASCAR team leader in the garage of the fictional Bobby Spencer Racing. After the owner of the same name (Bruce McGill) retires and passes the reins of leadership to his millennial daughter Catherine (Jillian Mueller) in the pilot episode, the series becomes a daily cycle of lazy fights against snobs / old guard against new guard while Kevin and the rest of his team struggle to come to terms with the change.
To the credit of series creator / showrunner Jeff Lowell and director Andy Fickman (who directed all 10 episodes of the first season), the team of the same name has distinct personalities without ever going too far in crass head gear stereotypes. There is the pragmatic and salty Chuck (Gary Anthony Williams), his nebulous partner Amir (Dan Ahdoot), and NASCAR driver Jake (Freddie Stroma), who skates with a charismatic mix of vanity, stubbornness and youthful naivete. Completing the gang is office manager Beth (Sarah Stiles), Kevin’s best friend and confidant. The cast is charming enough, handling their roles with a kind of discrete ease, rather than the exaggeration present in so many other series. Love it or hate it, James more or less made a career at this point playing nice bums (with the odd exception Sometimes), and Stiles manages to find warmth and bitterness in Beth, giving the character genuine complexity.
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But the characterizations are not enough to compensate for the fact that The Crew it’s just not funny. Yes, comedy is subjective, and yes, a person’s preference for the jokes here will depend on how much they like this particular type of sitcom – a hyperspecific genre in itself – to begin with. But the writers’ idea of what separates middle-aged youth or the working class from the corporate world seems, for want of a better word, basic. In one episode, the team is disgusted with Catherine replenishing the break room with healthy snacks instead of junk food. Another plot point leaves team members incredulous that their longtime steak sponsor has been replaced by a company specializing in meat substitutes. There are jokes about the strangeness of any restaurant other than the local bar (the predictably called Pit Stop). There are jokes about Instagram. Regardless of whether the jokes are right or not, it is irrelevant – canned laughter remains high until 11 all the time, as if trying to drown out any divergent opinions.
In addition to the program’s humor, much of The CrewThe dramatic tension of – what little there is – comes from the threat of unwanted changes in the workplace, and Kevin and Catherine’s conflicting views will soon be ugly. But because this is, once again, a sitcom with multiple cameras and laughter, there is not much room for evolution. The format has always been tailor-made for repetition, allowing audiences to experience the same emotional sensations week after week (or, in the case of Netflix, on a greedy binge).
Only in the penultimate chapter of the season is there any indication of a real wave of growth in the series’ relationships and in the dynamics of the workplace. Until then, it is episode after episode of minor crisis resolved through reluctant concessions. For a program apparently about the difficulty of change, The Crew he is mainly interested in maintaining the status quo.