News flash: Some women like to drink and have sex. A lot.
There. You've absorbed everything Are You There, Chelsea? has to offer. Feel free to spend your evening elsewhere.
Though next time NBC has that little on its corporate mind, let's hope the network airs a PSA instead and spares us another punishingly awful sitcom.
Aside from the questions Chelsea (NBC, tonight, 8:30 ET/PT, * out of four)raises about NBC's comedy direction, the only marginally interesting thing about this adaption of Chelsea Handler's book Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, is that it stars Handler herself â€" but not as herself. Laura Prepon plays Chelsea, and Handler plays her older "judgey, super-Christian" sister, Sloane.
Age may be one of the reasons for this odd bit of casting: The book mostly centered on Handler's younger years. But watching her as Sloane, it's just as likely someone realized, whatever one may think of Handler as author, stand-up or host, she displays neither the acting skills nor star appeal to carry a prime-time sitcom. The mistake NBC was in thinking Prepon could do significantly better with this misbegotten part. Her character is as unpleasant and unamusing a s Handler's. She just smiles more.
This version of Handler's life opens with Chelsea in jail on a drunken driving charge, praying to vodka for help. Released, she vows to change her life â€" not by reducing her drinking, but by moving closer to the bar where she works so she won't have to drive.
That contrivance is enough to set up the show's two main locations: The bar, where she works with her best friend Olivia (Ali Wong), and the new apartment she and the equally wild Olivia share with the naïve, virginal Dee Dee (Lauren Lapkus). And oh, the fun they have making fun of Dee Dee's virginity.
Vulgarity and lack of taste aren't the issues here as much as a deadening single-mindedness. Almost every joke that's not about Chelsea's desire to drink is about her desire to have sex (or, if a red-haired man is involved, not have sex). It's enough to make CBS' Monday lineup look classy by comparison.
If you like, consider Chelsea the unintended consequence of broadcast's stricter standards. On cable, they'd just show her having sex and be done with it. But since broadcast can't show, and can't use profanity to describe, it now compensates by making a hundred euphemism-laden jokes for each of cable's one. It's death by a thousand small cut-ups.
As usual on TV, all is not lost. Lapkus is a bit much in the premiere, but later she settles down enough to show some comic promise â€" and even now she's the only break from the overarching snide, nasty tone. There also are a few amusing moments from Rescue Me's Lenny Clarke as Chelsea's father, though you can't help hoping Denis Le ary will rescue him from this disaster and give him a better show.
Something devoutly to be wished for the rest of us as well.
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