I wanted to like NBC’s new sitcom About a Boy (with back-to-back episodes tonight serving as the season finale), I really did. For starters, I love both the Nick Hornby book it’s based on and the movie adaptation that (in my humble opinion) is still the best of the Hugh Grant rom-coms. Secondly, who isn’t a fan of Jason Katims? He’s the About a Boy show-runner who’s had success with other NBC adaptations like Friday Night Lights and Parenthood.
Then there’s that poor bastard David Walton, king of cancelled NBC midseason replacements: Quarterlife, 100 Questions, Perfect Couples, and the very underrated and worth-watching Bent were all NBC midseason sitcoms that were quickly cancelled. NBC’s sorry treatment of Bent (given only 6 episodes with each airing two-at-a-time with no lead-in and minimal advertising) still rankles.
So I really wanted to get behind this show, and be thrilled for the very first David Walton-starring show to survive to a second season. However, each episode of this show gets a little bit worse, and it’s even starting to get unintentionally creepy.
What do I mean by that? Well, the movie version of About a Boy worked because they were never desperate in getting you to like Hugh Grant. You liked him because he was a cad undergoing a transformation into a cad who’s also a decent father-figure. The TV About a Boy’s version of Will is pretty much a decent guy by episode 2, and routinely does things that are unrealistically noble in his pursuit of helping his neighbor kid Marcus.
Realistically, would a single man who’s been trying to win over Adrianne Palicki’s doctor ever ditch her at an important work gala so he can go to Marcus’s birthday party? Definitely not. But that’s exactly what Will did in last week’s episode. He has a plausibility-stretching tendency to put Marcus (a neighbor kid he likes but has known for about two months) above all things, spending a fortune on the kid, and dropping the possibility of having sex with beautiful women to save the kid from humiliations that never really mean much.
Plus, it’s begun to irk me that Marcus’ mom Fiona (played by the lovely Minnie Driver, also grateful to have steady work) relies so heavily on Will, but keeps berating him for this and that thing each episode. She’s chastising him for not being a better role model for Marcus, even though Will isn’t Marcus’ father, never asked to be, and doesn’t have kids of his own. It’s a bit like taking on a huge responsibility that you don’t have to, and then getting told that you’re not doing it perfect. You keep waiting for the moment Will says “Get the hell out of my house, we’re setting up boundaries t-o-d-a-y” but he never does or even wants to.
It’s all just a bit too cheesy and “likable” but not very realistic or funny. Grade for season 1 (excluding finale): C