New show ‘Country Comfort’ proves unrealistic
(L-R), Cast members Griffin McIntyre and Jamie Mann ’21 pose in front of the “Country Comfort” billboard in Times Square, New York City.
There are so many sitcoms that are known to be great. There was “The Office,” “Seinfeld” and “Friends.” But now there is this new sitcom called “Country Comfort,” and it is awful.
“Country Comfort,” which came out on Netflix on March 19, is about an aspiring country singer who mistakenly goes into the wrong house at the wrong time and ends up becoming the family nanny.
The characters include Katharine McPhee as Bailey, the aspiring country-singer-turned-nanny. Eddie Cibrian is Beau, the man of the house. Ricardo Hurtado is Tuck, the eldest son. Staples High School’s very own Jamie Mann ’21 is Brody, the second oldest. Griffin McIntyre is Dylan, the youngest son. Shiloh Verrico is Cassidy, the oldest daughter who dearly misses her mother, and Pyper Braun is the youngest of the family.
The show is very character-driven, and so the show might have actually been a great concept if the god-awful characters weren’t so poorly written.
In the first episode, it is revealed that the mother of all the children and Beau’s wife died years before Katherine shows up. The father, Beau, gets a new girlfriend named Summer, who is not a very good mother-figure and is not well received by Cassidy
It is also revealed in the first episode that Katherine had a boyfriend who she lived with, but when they broke up, he kicked her out of his band, out of his house and out of their relationship, essentially leaving her with nothing.
The fact about these characters is that they are unrealistic and ungenuine. Throughout the first episode alone, there are scenes in the show in which the actors are very clearly acting.
For one thing, the characters talk to themselves for the sole reason of exposition for the audience. This is a behavior that people wouldn’t do in real life.
The characters are also incompetent, as they refuse to acknowledge their flaws and boundaries. Summer refuses to see that she is a bad mother-figure, and Cassidy refuses to see that she holds back the family from moving on from their mother’s death.
Not to mention, there is dialogue said by the characters that goes overlooked by the other characters and is not given context at all. In the first scene in the second episode, Bailey had cooked breakfast for the entire family. When Beau takes a bite of a waffle that Bailey cooked, Summer walks into the room and asks Beau whether that waffle he had eaten made him happy. When Beau says he’s happy, Summer responds “You know what’s better than being happy? Being alive.”
This response then goes unanswered and unacknowledged the remainder of the entire episode. That kind of response should not go unanswered and without context because it suggests that Beau’s life is in danger.
While they play crummy characters, it is evident that the actors are good actors and have talent. They have the potential to be great and famous, but their only flaws in the show are the characters they play.
In short, “Country Comfort” is a good story that is too dependent on unrealistic, dumb, crazy characters that simply don’t replicate the actions that would be taken by real people in the bizarre situation that is the plot.
