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Guys Like Us aired from October 1998 until January 1999 on UPN.
Jared and Sean ( Bumper Robinson, Chris Hardwick) were roommates sharing a bachelor pad apartment in Chicago. Jared was a rather stiff marketing executive for a sporting goods manufacturer, and Sean a free-spirited musician who worked in a music store and had a band. Life was just the way they wanted it until Maestrol ( Maestro Harrel), Jared's kid brother moved in when his widowed father got a 14-month job heading up an engineering team building a dam in Venezuela. Hyperactive Maestrol tried to be helpful, including setting up both guys with dates, but his presence did cramp their social style. Jude and Vance ( Linda Cardellini, Andy Berman), who booked Sean's band at High School and other dances , worked with him at the music store. Kim ( Karen Maruyama), a single mother who lived in their building, had a cute daughter Nikki ( Courtney Mun), who was in Maestrol's class. Jared was attracted to their teacher, Bridget Cole ( Tammy Townsend), but the show was canceled before they made it to their first date.
A Review from Variety
Guys Like Us
((SITCOM; UPN, MON. OCT. 5, 8 P.M.))
By LAURA FRIES
Filmed in Los Angeles by Columbia TriStar Television in association with United Paramount Network. Executive producers, David W. Duclon and Dan Schneider; producer, Roxie Wenk Evans; director, Rich Correll; writer, Schneider; production designer, Jerry Dunn; director of photography, Dan Johnson.
Maestro Harris.....Maestro Harrell
Jared Harris.....Bumper Robinson
Sean Barker.....Chris Hardwick
UPN is banking on the innate appeal of precocious 6-year-old Maestro Harrell for the success of its new comedy "Guys Like Us." A TGIF wannabe with MTV sensibilities, this buddy/family show suffers from terminal cuteness.
Harrell plays the much younger brother of Jared (Bumper Robinson), a twentysomething professional who shares his Cleveland bachelor pad with friend and musician Sean Barker (Chris Hardwick). When Jared's father takes an engineering job in Venezuela for 14 months, young Maestro has no other option but to live with the guys. Suddenly, instead of Green Day and Budweiser it's Raffi and Kool Aid.
According to Sean, on the scale of bad ideas (ranging from Hanson, to shooting the president), living with Maestro ranks at the top. The munchkin's antics interfere with the responsible Jared's work ethic and foil Sean's happy-go-lucky lifestyle. Camera mugging aside, it's hard to get warm and fuzzy about a kid who gets passed around like a bad penny, and conventional wisdom allows only so much leeway when it comes to the welfare of kids on TV.
The show, however, is not without its moments. Robinson has real charisma while Hardwick, the former host of MTV's "Singled Out," brings authenticity to his slacker role. Harrell, much cuter than Urkel but just as intrusive, hits every mark as if the script reads "steal scene here." Director Rich Cornell and the thesps display an uncanny knack for executing physical comedy and the show manages to cover a lot of ground at a nice pace.
Series creator/writer Dan Schneider ("Head of the Class") has worked the kid angle well with popular Nickelodeon sitcoms "All That" and "Kenan & Kel," as well as the theatrical "Good Burger," but it might be time to try a strictly grown-up comedy. The technical credits are decent and the show is buoyed by a hip soundtrack.
A Review of Some Of UPN's Fall 1998 Comedies including Guys Like Us from The SF Gate.
Running out of synonyms for "bad'
"Pfeiffer' comedy could cause an epidemic of unprintable language
TIM GOODMAN
Monday, October 5, 1998
There's a misguided belief that somehow critics find it easier to write negative rather than positive reviews. That the sheer weight of their disgust and disappointment, fury and bitterness will somehow produce words that float out effortlessly.
Those people haven't had to sit through three UPN sitcoms.
Make that four. Because UPN has pulled what was supposed to be the pilot for its alleged comedy, "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer" (9 p.m. Monday, Ch. 44), thus forcing TV critics across the country to do what they surely wouldn't have - watch the second episode, another 22 minutes of what has to be a contender for worst sitcom since (gasp!) last season.
By the way, the "P" in Pfeiffer is not silent. And that's one of the "jokes" of the series. Go ahead, pull yourself up off the floor.
Here's what watching these shows makes you want to do: Drive insanely down to Los Angeles, scan the phone book frantically, then drive over to the houses of all the writers and personally drag them outside and punish them. That's one urge. The other is to fly down there to speed the whole process ups.
Maybe it's the fact that we're coming to the end of the fall rollout, that 26 of the 36 new shows have already been reviewed and there just isn't another way to creatively say "lame." Maybe the end result of seeing "The Army Show" and "The Brian Benben Show" and "The Secret Lives of Men" is to create the world's shortest critical fuse, and, through no fault of its own, UPN just happens to be next on the list with yet another show about a motherless child, yet another show about a blue-collar fat guy and, well, the first and hopefully last show about an idiotic Abraham Lincoln, his black butler and a very horny Mary Todd Lincoln.
Maybe, just by coincidence, all those things came tragically together to distort rational judgment and send a certain someone to anger management class.
But probably not. All three of these shows are bad, and it is taking enormous concentration - interest, even - to want to write about them. Because in some small way that dignifies them, alerts people to their existence when no one should ever have to see them. And it's flat-out no fun.
Of course, it gets you thinking about Dante's
"Inferno," and maybe that's not such a bad thing. Great piece of work, no question about it. You know how there were all those levels of pain, each greater than the next? Maybe if we apply that blueprint to these UPN sitcoms, we can come up with something positive to say.
Yeah - like "DiResta" (8:30 p.m. Monday, Ch. 44) isn't as good as its near-clone, "King of Queens," on CBS, but it's a lot better than "Guys Like Us," and flat-out brilliant in comparison to "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer."
Considered in that context, there's no need to be overly harsh. Yes, it's dreadful and unfunny, but its failure is no greater than the hordes of other blue-collar-guys- watching-big-screen-TVs-and- battling-the-wife shows that have preceded it.
It feels good to be nice.
And "Guys Like Us" (8 p.m. Monday, Ch. 4) - maybe we could just say that it's less awful than its near-clone,
"My Brother's Keeper," on ABC. Or that Chris Hardwick, who became famous on MTV, is so much more polished and likable in comparison with John Sencio of "The Army Show," who also came over from MTV to prove beyond a doubt that being a talentless, mugging boob is no detriment when it comes to introducing Marilyn Manson videos.
See, mothers and school teachers across the country would be proud: If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. Or at least find something almost nice to say.
Oh, forget it. No more Dante games. No more reverse psychology. No more trying to avoid the fact that these shows are just - here it comes - lame. This should be proof to you that saying bad things about bad shows is not easy.
If you must know, here are the skeletal details: "Guys Like Us" stars Hardwick and Bumper Robinson as two single guys getting along swell until 6-year-old Maestro Harrell, playing Robinson's brother, moves in. He's cute, the show is not funny. End of story.
"DiResta" stars former real-life transit cop John DiResta as a current TV make-believe transit cop and family man. He's likable but not memorable, the show is neither funny nor touching nor entertaining. Sad but true.
"The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer" can't be dismissed so quickly. It really is about a sexually confused Abe Lincoln, his British butler (perhaps that's an easy way for the producers to get around the word slave), his dim-witted British "manservant" and a randy Mary Todd Lincoln. The producers say it's a spoof of the Clinton White House. Some African Americans say it's racially insensitive. Here's what it is mostly: pathetic.
Preposterously bad jokes pile on top of each other as this unimaginably bad premise manages to be even worse than expected. The surprise here is that through the muck you can tell that Chi McBride, as Desmond, has a load of talent. Unfortunately for him, he's in a load of rubbish.
This is what UPN said about pulling the pilot: "UPN respects and appreciates all our viewers, and we especially wish to respond to feedback from our loyal African American audience."
Great. But pulling the pilot changes nothing. The second episode is equally bad. UPN needs to pull the whole series and apologize to Americans of all races for thinking we'd be stupid enough to watch it.
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