WORDS: Eva Short

Imagine AMC’s Mad Men. Strip away the tension-fraught dialogue and sharp humour. Take away the sophistication and intriguing foreignness of the 1950s setting. Take away Don Draper’s suave savoir-faire and the whiskey-cigarette smell that he wears like elegant cologne. What are you left with? A really boring show, but probably not as boring as CBS’s latest stab at an ad agency sitcom, The Crazy Ones.

The show centres around Simon Roberts (Robin Williams), the eccentric head of an advertising firm trying to cling onto the vestiges of his company’s (and his own) former success. His daughter Sydney (Sarah Michelle Gellar), comparably more grounded and uptight, is taken on as partner, and the two make a familial effort to keep the firm afloat. I should be able to say “hilarity ensues” here, but I simply cannot. Every attempt at comedy in this show is hollow and unoriginal, with each successive gag being played out with a sense of desperation, begging you to laugh, to no avail.

Robin Williams delivers the same material he’s renowned for: foppish improv and drawn out riffs. While he does it well, the routine is tired. We as an audience, having been exposed to this style since the start of Williams’s long career in the 1980s, are completely inured to the comedic charm. Gellar, known for packing a punch in her roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Cruel Intentions, fails to endear audiences in her portrayal as the neurotic Sydney, and in fact seems primarily pathetic.

The show’s premise, in a way, mirrors the circumstance of the main stars – the nineties were kind to both Williams and Gellar, and the two seem to want to breathe life into their careers the way the Roberts family want to breathe life into their advertising pitches. This time around, the attempt has been in vain.