PILOT REVISITED: $#*! MY DAD SAYS
The Details:
Premiered: September 23, 2010 on CBS
Starring: William Shatner, Jonathan Sadowski, Nicole Sullivan, Will Sasso
Created by: David Kohan, Max Mutchnick, Justin Halpern & Patrick Schumacker
What I Thought Then:
"There was not much to like about this pilot."
"The writers seemed too focused on coming up with outlandish and funny things for Shatner to say that they failed to build a plot or story around those statements (which aren't that funny anyway)."
"I didn't expect much from a sitcom starring William Shatner or from a sitcom based on a twitter feed but yet it even failed to meet those low expectations."
"$#*! My Dad Says is a dismal show, harboring the worst qualities of every lame, four-camera, laugh-tracked sitcom on television. The jokes are painful, the acting is hammy, the characters are flat, and it simply isn't funny. Ever." - Kris King, Slant Magazine
"Let's put it this way, $#*! makes ABC's ill-fated appropriation of the Geico cavemen in 2007 look like sheer genius." - Andrew Wallenstein, The Hollywood Reporter
"William Shatner makes the pilot barely watchable, but only because the fleeting moments of heart overshadow the mostly limp one-liners." - Brian Lowry, Variety
"It's not unwatchable... but it's irrelevant, a wholly generic sitcom so divorced from its source material that you have to pinch yourself to remember it had anything to do with the Internet, or the world after 1985." - Mike Hale, The New York Times
"So they can't use the name, can't use the jokes and can't keep the tone of the Twitter feed. Remind me again why CBS wanted to make this into a TV show?" - Alan Sepinwall, HitFix
What I Think Now:
This show was famously based on a twitter feed back when Twitter was in its early and fun era. This terrible sitcom actually gave me a negative opinion of the feed. Whenever I hear the title, I think "lame CBS sitcom" not "clever relic from early Twitter days." William Shatner is just horrific in this pilot. I think his character plays even worse in the Trump era but the bigger problem is Shatner is just a terrible actor. Every line is delivered the exact same way. It very much sounds like someone reading each line for the first time. Of course even if he delivered them well, it's not like he had great lines to say. It's like they pulled out jokes from the twitter feed and then built a flimsy set-up towards it. Rinse and repeat. Jonathan Sadowski and Mad TV alums Nicole Sullivan and Will Sasso were game but they were dealing with a wooden prop on the set that looked like William Shatner. This could have been a show with potential with a better actor - someone like Judd Hirsch perhaps. And I remembered that horrible back and forth that ended with Shatner and then Sadowski saying "I see" and I hated it just as much this time around.
$#*! My Dad Says seemed destined to be critically reviled but in 2010, as today, CBS can make hits out of shows that critics don't like. One of the biggest schedule moves for Fall 2010 was The Big Bang Theory moving to Thursdays from Mondays to lead off the night and moving Survivor from the home it had for almost a decade. It might seem like a foregone conclusion now that Big Bang would work in its new lead-off slot but it wasn't a sure thing at the time. Still, following a hit sitcom still mattered back in those days and $#*! My Dad Says (which was pronounced "Bleep My Dad Says") got the 8:30pm slot. The critics hated it as expected (28 on Metacritic) but ratings weren't bad. However, the drop off from Big Bang was sizable so it had the notoriety of being the highest rated cancellation of the season. After 18 episodes, the series ended its season early (in February) and was cancelled in May. Twitter feed creator (and co-creator on this show) Justin Halpern basically admitted a few years later that the show killed the minor trend of basing TV shows off of twitter feeds. Shatner, now in his 90s, has stayed in the public arena but hasn't tried a scripted television show since this one (thank goodness) while you can catch Will Sasso back on Thursdays on CBS with Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage.
Final Episode: February 17, 2011
Episode Count: 18
Where to Watch: Currently streaming on Tubi
I'm excited to be contributing to The TV Ratings Guide! You can read my regular work in my weekly newsletter at Benjamonster's TV.
