Better with You aired from September 2010 until May 2011 on ABC.
A comedy that revolves around three couples in different stages of their romantic relationships. One is a long marriage, one an unmarried relationship, while the third one is engaged and expecting a child.
A Review from The New York Times
Better With You
Three Couples, Three Different Stages of Romance
By MIKE HALE
Published: September 21, 2010
The first question regarding “Better With You,” the new ABC comedy that begins on Wednesday night, is how to say the title. Better with you, as opposed to without you, implying squabbling partners? Or better with you, as opposed to with someone else, implying the act of choosing a partner?
As it turns out, the show wants to have it both ways, or every which way. Jake Lacy and JoAnna Garcia play the 20-something Casey and Mia, together for just seven weeks and suddenly engaged (better with you?). Josh Cooke and Jennifer Finnigan play the 30-something Ben and Maddie (Mia’s sister), together for nine years but still unmarried, whose complacency is thrown into doubt by the younger pair’s precipitate engagement (better with you?).
And if that’s not enough relatable relationship humor, the sitcom veterans Debra Jo Rupp (“That ’70s Show”) and Kurt Fuller (“Big Day”) play the sisters’ parents, whose skepticism at having Casey (a member of an “avant-garde metal band with a performance-art component”) thrust on them is overcome by their desire for a wedding and a grandchild, in whatever order fate allows.
The differences among the three couples are occasionally illustrated by parallel cross-cutting scenes, like a sequence in which we see what happens after each man asks his partner, “So, do you want to fool around?” That hoary phrasing sounds a little off coming from Casey, who practically has “outer-borough hipster” written on his forehead, but “Better With You” doesn’t let anything stand in the way of a good old sitcom cliché.
The show tries for a sheen of topicality in the generational fault line between the younger couples. Maddie and Ben, a lawyer and a hotel manager, dress like Nordstrom mannequins; Casey favors jeans and hoodies. After receiving a series of text messages from Mia (founder of an online-invitation start-up), Maddie says, “I don’t get this generation’s need for constant communication.” Reminded by Ben that she is only four years older than her sister, she replies: “But it’s a big four years. None of the famous people her age wear underwear.”
But the foundations of the show’s humor are as old as “I Love Lucy,” or at least “Mad About You.” The inverse ratio between age and sex drive is a big one, but the real heart of the show appears to be Maddie’s made-for-TV hysteria upon being reminded that she’s in her 30s and unmarried — a stand-in for the usual female panic at being in your 30s and childless, though that will probably be added to the mix soon enough.
The executive producers, Shana Goldberg-Meehan and Greg Malins, both worked on “Friends,” and the jokes in “Better With You” have the polish and the off-center, sneakily funny quality that marked that show. But the single-family multigeneration setup seems to have facilitated an undertone of nastiness and desperation in the humor, most clearly expressed in the condescending portrayal of the youngest couple. Casey, especially, with his Barney Fife-style guilelessness, is a character that doesn’t exist in the real world, a holy fool for the digital age.
“Better With You” is sufficiently slick not to look out of place in ABC’s Wednesday night sitcom lineup, but the familiar ingredients (right down to the I’m-not-gay joke about accidentally sitting in a valet parker’s lap) may make it a speed bump in the schedule between superior shows like “The Middle” and “Modern Family.” Ms. Rupp and Mr. Fuller, the old pros, are effortlessly funny, and Mr. Cooke is appealing as the diffident Ben, but they’d be better with different material.
BETTER WITH YOU
ABC, Wednesday nights at 8:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 7:30, Central time.
Created by Shana Goldberg-Meehan; Ms. Goldberg-Meehan and Greg Malins, executive producers. Produced by Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Silver and Gold Productions and Warner Brothers Television.
WITH: JoAnna Garcia (Mia), Jennifer Finnigan (Maddie), Josh Cooke (Ben), Jake Lacy (Casey), Kurt Fuller (Joel) and Debra Jo Rupp (Vicky).
A Review from USA TODAY
'Better With You' makes ABC family sitcom block even better
Updated 9/22/2010
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
Few things in life have as much comic potential as love and marriage.
Just ask ABC, which has built television's best three-show sitcom block out of love in all its multiple family permutations. All that block was missing was a fourth show. And ABC may have found it with the season's best new sitcom, Better With You, an amiable relationship comedy blending Cougar Town's romance, The Middle's heart and Modern Family's multi-generational approach.
Created by Friends veteran Shana Goldberg-Meehan, Better focuses on three related couples at three different relationship stages. Baby sister Mia (Joanna Garcia) has just gotten engaged to Casey (Jake Lacy), even though she has known him less than two months.
That horrifies older sister Maddie (Jennifer Finnigan), who has lived for nine years with boyfriend Ben — played by Josh Cooke, Finnigan's co-star from Committed, which may explain their comfortable on-screen rapport. They don't want to get married, a decision Maddie continually refers to as a "valid life choice."Mia and Casey are blissfully and humorously oblivious to Maddie and Ben's growing dismay. (Mia's love-haze response to the discovery that Casey has "all these half brothers and sisters" is a buoyant "You do? Isn't this fun how fast this is going?") But they are worried about Mia's parents, fabulously played by Kurt Fuller and That '70s Show's delightful Debra Jo Rupp.
It all comes to a head at a family dinner, as secrets spill in one of those terrific sitcom scenes where each joke and revelation tops the next. And in that scene, what had been a good comedy transforms into an even more promising one.
Mind you, this isn't Modern Family. No new ground is being broken, no barriers being crossed. And despite the references to the parents' Middle-ish economic setbacks, the overall, brightly lit tone is one of old-fashioned prosperity, a sitcom world where real problems seldom intrude.
Still, it's impossible to offer a fully developed world in one half-hour. For now, what Better brings you are six well-written, well-played characters (Lacy offers a particularly nice take on his slacker doofus) who say and do enough funny things to keep you amused between Middle and Modern.
Anything more to come will just be gravy.
A Review from The Los Angeles Times
Television review: 'Better With You'
Relationships travel at different speeds in the new comedy on ABC. ThatĂ?Â?s a good start, but the overfamiliar jokes might cause sputtering.
* A sparky cast (including Joanna Garcia, Debra Jo Rupp and Kurt Fuller) enlivens this not wholly predictable multi-camera sitcom focusing on three linked couples (two parents, their daughters and respective menfolk, one a longtime live-in boyfriend, the other an overnight fianc). New kid on the ABC Wednesday night domestic-hilarity block.
Wednesday has become family comedy night on ABC – which is not to say a night of comedies for the family, unless you're prepared to tell your children why there are no big kitties in "Cougar Town." "Modern Family" is the pole from which this tent depends, and there is also "The Middle," and now "Better with You," a multi-camera sitcom made by people familiar -- perhaps overfamiliar -- with the form.
Creator Shana Goldberg-Meehan worked on "Mad About You" and "Friends," and the pilot was directed by James Burrows, of "Taxi" and "Cheers" and so on, who also directed the pilots for this year's "$#*! My Dad Says" and "Mike & Molly." It's not bad at all, but it so completely a thing of its kind as to make no extraordinary claims on your attention.
Like "Modern Family," it concerns three interlinked couples; parents Vicky and Joel (Debra Jo Rupp and Kurt Fuller); daughters Maddie and Mia (Jennifer Finnigan and Joanna Garcia) and their respective beaus, Ben and Casey (Josh Cooke and Jake Lacy). Unmarried older sister Maddie has lived with Ben for nine years: "It's a valid lifestyle choice," she protests, too much. Mia has known Casey -- who plays in "an avant-garde metal band with a performance art component," though nothing about his character suggests that this is so -- just over seven weeks. But they'll be engaged before the pilot is half over.
The show begins with each couple in a taxi. Mia and Casey want to travel via some tunnel because "it's dark and we can fool around." Maddie and Ben finish one another's sentences. And Vicky and Joel don't talk, yet another long relationship made spiteful for the sake of a joke. Or many jokes, rather.
The cast is able, and the idea to contrast relationships moving at different speeds is a good one, as is that of Maddie re-examining her life in light of Mia's. (Even though she's only four years older, Maddie feels a gap: "None of the famous people her age wear underwear.") It's a clean start; let's see which way it runs.
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