Ground Floor (Season 1)

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