CBS still knows how to make comedy that thrives on conflict. Case in point: When The Eye presented its new sitcom The Great Indoors at this summer’s Television Critics Association Press Tour, it managed to stir the type of Gen Xers-versus-milliennials clash that Joel McHale now finds himself in every Thursday night at 8:30 p.m. (7:30 Central). When executive producer Mike Gibbons described the show’s supporting characters as “millennials in an overly PC, coddled work environment,” the TV press’ representatives from multiple demographics responded in kind. Some millennials balked. Some Gen Xers nodded in recognition. And surely someone who’s around the same age as Stephen Fry—who plays Roland, the daffy founder of the adventure magazine at the center of The Great Indoors—wondered if it was too early for a stiff belt of something brown.
His unfortunate choice of words aside, Gibbons has tapped a potentially rich vein. Three extremely different, occasionally strident generations are currently jostling with one another in American workplaces, and an American workplace comedy ought to convert that jostling into studio-audience laughter. As Jack Gordon, outdoor reporter adjusting to a digitized desk job, McHale provides The Great Indoors with its POV, but that doesn’t mean the show is Guy Born In The ’70s Knows Best. The pilot opens itself up to equal-opportunity offense, expressed in a lingo any Joel McHale character can comprehend: sarcasm. “You mean I could forge a lasting, meaningful relationship with a younger generation?” he rhetorically asks his new boss, Brooke (Susannah Fielding). “And who knows, even though I’m the teacher, maybe I could end up blah bleh bleh…” If Jack sounds a lot like Community’s original conception of Jeff Winger, that’s because he is: self-assured, smarmy, sometimes shirtless—notes McHale can hit like Keith Richards rattling off the “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” riff.
The Great Indoors is the type of show that would probably follow that reference up with “Keith who?” but at least it was savvy about picking people to say such words. McHale leads a mix of seasoned veterans (Fry, Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and promising new faces (Fielding, Christine Ko, Shaun Brown) who carry the show across some rough terrain. The characters have their differences, but the cast gels swiftly—especially McHale and Fry, who find an easy mentee-mentor relationship as Jack and Roland. That degree of ensemble connection is enough to place a futures bet on The Great Indoors, and so is the pilot’s way with its setup/punchline jokes. (Roland: “What can I get to restore your aging spirits?” Jack: “Oh, I’ll have what you’re having.” Roland: “Then you’ll be having your third Scotch of the morning.”) There’s the possibility of a good workplace sitcom within The Great Indoors, something akin to a NewsRadio for the age of BuzzFeed. McHale and Fielding have a Dave-and-Lisa thing going on, and Roland is well on his way to being as eccentric as Jimmy James.
If only Brown, Ko, and Mintz-Plasse weren’t all playing slight variations on the naïve, chowderheaded Matthew type. The Great Indoors’ greatest stumbling block is also the reason it got running in the first place: Jack’s crisis of identity in a world of dating apps and gimmicky listicles, perceived sensitivity and ambiguous sexuality, as represented by his new charges. The show makes hay of a true-to-life inability to bridge a generation gap, but does so by aiming at easy (and musty) targets like participation trophies and Pabst Blue Ribbon. The Great Indoors is more than willing to make a joke at Jack’s expense—but never does so with the amount of contempt it reserves for Clark (Mintz-Plasse), Mason (Brown), or Emma (Ko).
Episode two—in which the kids teach Jack the art of crafting an online profile, and he tries to get them to talk to romantic prospects with their faces—doubles down on the “Eek! Millennials!” material, so maybe this is just the show The Great Indoors wants to be. But whenever the show stops speaking in last year’s trending topics and digs around in its quarreling personalities, it shows a better, brighter version of itself. Its premise is a shallow well, but a cast of colorful characters working through their differences toward a common goal is an endlessly renewable resource. When its cast is interacting as characters, and not boogeymen born on the op-ed page, The Great Indoors is worth subscribing to.