Welcome to the Captain.

TV

Welcome to the Captain

by Craig D. Lindsey

Now that the writers’ strike is finally over and your beloved shows can get back to work, networks don’t have to dip into their midseason-replacement stash and program shows like Welcome to the Captain. This show is so shitty, I don’t know how the producers managed to get the pilot greenlit so they could make the five episodes the Tiffany network is obviously burning off.

This single-camera sitcom features some whiny screenwriter (Fran Kranz—yeah, never heard of him either) moving into a Los Angeles apartment building filled with quirky, kooky, funny characters. (Okay, that’s a lie.) There’s his old college buddy (American Pie’s Chris Klein), a douchebag accountant-to-the-stars. There’s “Uncle” Saul (Jeffrey Tambor), a former Three’s Company writer who can’t stop bragging about all the “Me”-generation sitcom starlets he’s shagged. (This could be seen as an in-joke to Three’s Company fans, since Tambor guested on the show, like, a kazillion times.) And there’s Jesus (eerie Zach Braff look-alike Al Madrigal), the dim-witted daytime attendant and resident building spy.

When our protagonist isn’t serving as straight man to these so-called nutty folk, he pines over another neighbor (JoAnna Garcia, formerly of Reba), an aspiring acupuncturist with a boyfriend on the East Coast. Oh yeah, and for some reason Raquel Welch shows up once in a while.

Christ, is this show not funny. Creator/writer/producer/director/Ben Stiller-buddy John Hamburg basically subscribes to the belief that if you keep things cute and charming in a sitcom, you don’t need wit, cleverness, originality, edginess or even jokes.

But, for all the lameness that happens at the Captain, the most unforgivable is how this show wastes the talents of Tambor. You’d think Hamburg and the writers would’ve stepped up their game a bit when they snagged Tambor, the man who once brilliantly embodied those unforgettable sitcom characters Hank Kingsley and George Bluth Sr.

God bless Tambor for doing what he can with such a bland, barely there role. But even with Tambor around, Welcome to the Captain will soon be saying farewell.