Partners

While canned laughter is rarely welcome, it's even more oddly intrusive than usual in Partners. Did the producers happen to hire some weird laughers for this gig? What it comes down to is that, if we're noticing the laughtrack, it's because we're not laughing ourselves. Though every single one of the lead actors in Partners has great charm, and Urie and Krumholtz have chemistry that's by turns comedically zingy and sweet, this material is so predictable it's annoying. Not only are there tired gay-stereotype jokes aplenty (adolescent Joe vows he'll marry Alyssa Milano, while Louis claims his future wife is Bette Midler), there are sitcom-y plot drivers, such as when Louis blitzkriegs Joe and Ali's engagement by revealing that Joe originally intended to dump her before he went ahead and proposed. Why don't characters on sitcoms just talk to each other like real people so there are no Big Misunderstandings? Oh yeah, because that would spoil the joke.

In addition, though the dialogue has a quip/counterquip quality similar to that on the funnier Will & Grace, the pop culture references are curiously dated: Clay Aiken, "raise the roof," Britney Spears? Did Kohan and Mutchnick's pop-culture consciousness get frozen in amber sometime in the early 2000s? All that said, the cast's natural likability makes the show not a complete disaster; fun-to-watch Urie even stirs some occasional actual laughs. Put better lines in this guy's mouth! He's ready for them.