By: Robert Murphy
(Spoilers, you know
the drill)
In the insanely competitive world of investment banking
there is absolutely no time to have any kind of social life let alone a
relationship but Ground Floor tells
the story of one guy daring enough to try and have the career and the girl.
Brody (Sklyar Astin) is the top dog at his company and hopes to one day be just
like his boss Remington Mansfield (John C. McGinley.) At least that was the
case until the night he meets Jenny (Briga Heelan) who works with him at the
same company but as a member of the building support staff. It’s the classic
story of trying to get two worlds to collide and see if opposites really do
attract, Dharma and Greg comes to
mind when I think of what the show tries to do and then I add the comedy feel
of Friends to it as well. This is
know coincidence though as one of the main writers for the show, Greg Malins,
worked on Friends for years and with
a partner like Bill Lawrence who worked on shows like Scrubs and Spin City, you
can’t go wrong.
Ground Floor returns
one of my favorite actors to the screen with star John C. McGinley as he takes
on another very Dr. Cox kind of role, leading with an iron fists but somehow
being charmingly insane. Then we have Skylar Astin’s character Brody, now
Skylar is known for his role in Pitch
Perfect which doesn’t really get me hyped about him but he does play the
pretty boy roll of Brody exceedingly well. Brody’s character is meant to be
equal parts a guy’s club man and the affectionate type and Skylar Astin does
this just right. The show is mainly about Brody and how he is torn between two
worlds, his job relationship and his real one and often times Mansfield feels just like a second girlfriend
who’s jealous of Brody’s new one. Then we move onto Jenny who leads a relaxing
care free life on the bottom floor with the rest of her friends that work as
support team members for the company. All of these characters are such great
supporting additions to the show especially the character named Harvard (Rory
Scovel) who has a little bit of an unhealthy obsession with Jenny. His constant
jealous of Brody is constantly hilarious as he’ll do anything to impress Jenny,
even going so far as to make a framed pictured of her with a million tiny
photos of himself.
What’s great about the show for me was how the floors of the
building almost became the seating chart of a high school cafeteria where
people sit with their own people and they don’t ever mix. Jenny’s and Brody’s
friends point this out right from the get go as Mansfield points out how Brody
is on the road of potential and she’ll steer him right off of it. Even though
later Mansfield
will fall in love with her before even knowing her name and seeing that she’s
not some mid-level incompetent but really quite an impressive girl. The
constant issues that arise during Ground
Floor prove to be a challenge for the two though with Jenny spending the
night in one of the episodes and Brody complaining she shut off his alarm when
it went of at 4:30 AM. Or in another instance Brody must choose between going
to the same baseball game that his company and Jenny want to go to and who he
chooses to sit with. All of it had me constantly laughing and waiting for the
following episode each week.
I do have to point out my one flaw with the show and that’s
the odd tendency to include a dance number or a musical tune into 90% of the
episodes you will see. It’s not that they aren’t good but it is more or a less
of a question, why? Why are you doing this exactly? What’s the point? The only
explanation I can gather is that they were trying to put Skylar Astin’s musical
background to some sort of use in the show but really it isn’t necessary and
the shows just fine without it.
In conclusion, Ground
Floor gave me quite a bit of nostalgia for the old 90’s sitcoms that I
loved to watch growing up and love to watch to this day, it feels much the same
way that it did when I started watching Cougar
Town, another Bill Lawrence gem. There is a bit of testing that you can
notice while the writers try and find things that work and don’t but it doesn’t
need to with what is already a big consistent of the show. I personally hope to
see it back once again for another season especially when it came right down to
the big ending cliff hanger for this season.
Good:
- Gives such an old comedy feel to it that I loved
- Very funny and full of laughs
- John C. McGinley returns to television and is just the same
as I remember in Scrubs
Bad:
- The tendency for musical numbers
- There’s a bit of testing here and there with the writing but
the show remains solid in what it does best
Scully Rating: 9.0 out of 10
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