The Loop: Season One

Sam Sullivan was cherry picked as an executive right out of university by TA, the 11th biggest airline in the world. Catapulted into an executive position by a very clever thesis, he leapfrogged past his friends and even his assistant, an M.I.T. grad. Meanwhile, his roommates (brother Sully, the perennial slacker; monster-crush Piper, the student; and bombshell Lizzy, the ditzy bartender) constantly seduce him back into the debauched party life. Can Sam balance work and play? As a single camera sitcom with location shoots and no laugh track, in the tradition of other Fox shows like Malcolm in the Middle or the infinitely superior Arrested Development, The Loop is a sitcom that’s unfortunately far less than the sum of its parts. Rapid cuts, slick production, elaborate sets, rampant product placement, exotic locations, a sexy cast, scores of extras, buckets of music licensing and live tigers, chimps and donkeys can’t save the show from it’s formulaic, pedestrian writing. The standout in the cast is Mimi Rogers as Sam’s hardcore cougar mentor, who manages to wring laughs out of some of the "dick and balls” jokes. The show itself is remarkable only for the way it dances a complex waltz with network censors, weaving visual jokes about masturbation and barely veiled references to oral sex with border-line naughty terms for genitalia like "man beans” and invented curses like "bagsuck!” The fact that even Rob Corddry’s (The Daily Show) new, powerfully mundane, traditional Fox sitcom The Winner can coax more laughs out of an audience illustrates perfectly how the more sitcoms change, the more they stay the same.