Whitney Is A Terrible Show

I'm watching Whitney.

This. Show. Is. Terrible.

I've watched all four episodes now. I wanted to like it. I've liked her on the various roasts on Comedy Central, so I was pretty optimistic about her eponymous show.

The show says it's filmed in front of a live audience. This means that every sentence  is followed by a long pause, and the audience gives a very poor quality laugh track (I'm sure there is some Sweetening involved, here). I don't blame them, nothing in the show is really funny enough to laugh at. I'm not even sure there's much humor in the show at all.

The show is ostensibly about Whitney, a photographer, (who doesn't hold a camera properly, mind you) and her live-in boyfriend of five years. They are not married, because they're not the marrying folk. Or something. Whitney appears to be some sort of feminist too. Or maybe she just likes being macho; I'm not entirely sure.

The Pilot consists of Whitney going to a sex shop to buy a costume. Apparently their sex life is in a lull. She's not hot enough on her own, she needs to dress in a plastic/latex nurse costume. Her boyfriend ends up in the hospital, and they realize that their relationship isn't picture perfect, but it works for them. Gawker posted a video of Whitney saying "okay" over twenty times, or, once a minute. I suppose they needed more filler.

The next episode is First Date. Whitney realizes that she and her boyfriend have never been on an official first date. Of course, they've been on dates before, so this is a lie. She means that they didn't have a normal, romantic one. Like you see on TV and movies. On shows like Whitney. But, Whitney doesn't even seem to care about that sort of nonsense throughout the show, so it sounds like she's really just trying to make her and her boyfriends life miserable.

This is the only logical conclusion I can make since that is exactly what happens. She takes the First Date pseudo-seriously, and her boyfriend kinda doesn't take it seriously at all. She gets mad at him, and they go home. But she decides to be funny and tells him she doesn't go home with guys on the first date. Her boyfriend, Alex, takes this time to point out that, in fact, she does. She closes the door on him, and he sleeps at a friend's apartment. They spend the rest of the episode apart scheming against each other with the help of their friends. You know, like normal people. Wait, you mean you don't do this kind of crap to your significant other? Hmph, must just be them.

The next episode is called Silent Treatment and centers around Alex looking at another girl. You see, in TV world this isn't allowed. Certainly one should never gawk but what would most likely be a rather mundane part of everyday life turns into an entire episode that takes place over an entire day.

Whitney questions Alex and he lies. He figures Whitney doesn't want to hear he looked at another lady. Apparently, she's the only pretty person in the world now, all other women are ugly. I suspect that if he had looked at an "ugly" lady, she wouldn't have made an issue of it. Needless to say, she doesn't believe him that he didn't check out said lady and she gives him the silent treatment. The episode names they come up with on this show are awe-inspiring.

She soon realizes that her voice is really quite grating, and that she is actually rewarding Alex by not speaking to him. She's usually yelling and has a pretty monotonous voice, after all. Now, she ups the ante, and tortures her boyfriend by actually talking to him now. We all know that in the real world there is no greater punishment than having to listen to your significant other speak. To you. Regularly.

Right?

Whitney decides to annoy and harass Alex until he confesses that he checked the lady out, and proceeds to point out all the other good looking women at the bar-like place they always hang out. Naturally, Whitney does not approve. I don't remember how they settle this. He probably won't tell her when he sees an attractive lady, and she probably will try to ignore it. That's always the best way to solve problems--sweep them under the rug and ignore them.

Also, apparently their friend, Roxanne, wants to make her ex jealous and takes slutty Myspace pictures of herself.

This brings us to tonight's episode.

Basically Whitney and Alex try to be romantic. Again. They go on an awkward date. She deals with her friend's crisis. Her friend, Lily, is afraid that her boyfriend, Neil, is going to propose to her. She wants him to, so basically she's upset over nothing.

Alex and Whitney's date eventually takes them to where Neil is proposing to Lily. The entire time, Whitney complains and is a jerk to Alex.

That's really what makes this show terrible. Whitney is essentially about a couple that is bored and can hardly stand each other. But they love each other in some weird way for some strange reason. But they don't want to get married because Whitney's parents divorced.

Whitney is always rude to her boyfriend Alex. Alex is always pretty ambivalent to Whitney. There's nothing here to draw you in. None of the characters are even likable. I could care less what happens to the characters. This is a bad thing for a television show. The magic of shows like Friends or Community is that you care about the characters. All of them. You are interested in them and invested in them. People hoped for years that Ross and Rachel would get together. Sort of how people hoped Dawson would end up with Joey (but didn't).