Dr. Ken premieres on Friday October 2 at 8:30/7:30c on ABC
Pilot episode watched by reviewer
Starring: Ken Jeong, Suzy Nakamura, Dave Foley, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Albert Tsai and Krista Marie Yu
At its core, Dr. Ken has all the ingredients to succeed as a comedy: a workable premise that could make use of plenty of funny elements, a solid and great cast that could enhance the jokes there and an overall environment that sets the mood for an enjoyable comedy. However, the show’s jokes doesn’t take any advantage of any of them.
We are off to a bad start when we see the episode begins relying on fat jokes, one of the cheapest punchlines on television along the lines of gender, sex and gay jokes. Instead of graciously coming with something funny to joke about, the first remark at which the canned laughs jump on is out Dr. Ken saying “you are fat”. That wouldn’t be so bad if the rest of the episode did anything to redeem that cheap comedy.
Unfortunately, everything about Dr. Ken is a bunch of tone deaf jokes in every front. This is a comedy that tries to be warm when it stays with the family - falling flat on that front -, and that tries to be more edgy when it’s on the work place - instead, it comes off cheap.
Dr. Ken doesn’t benefit from splitting its setting on two different live areas; neither of them are very developed by what I saw from the pilot. The workplace setting is a bunch of cheap jokes that doesn’t bring anything that we haven’t seen before, going for laughs just of having Ken Jeong being mean to his patients. The family comedy setting is no better, with plots that have been done before better, lacking at the execution.
Dr. Ken tries to be two comedies at once and it’s failing on both fronts. This is really sad considering that the cast is strong enough to deliver some incredible and very well crafted jokes, however the plots and the punchlines are just not there. The writers seem to be aiming to an audience that is going to laugh at cheap comedy, and as we’ve seen lately that it rarely works. They could afford to be riskier and make some more creative jokes and plotlines to work.
Dr. Ken feels like a comedy that would’ve been fresh and innovative by the beginning of the 2000s or the end of the 90s, but as 2015, it just uses the same old resources we know from head to toe. And even then, they could make it work by executing it well and triggering nostalgia from that era, but sadly by the pilot there is no account of that happening. A promising premise and a well rounded cast is buried under the weight of cheap jokes and meaningless plots.
Grade: C-
