Bob Patterson

The "Seinfeld" curse strikes again, and thankfully this cursed show didn't last long. Absolutely painful, hugely unfunny mess about a successful motivational speaker whose own personal life is as chaotic as his professional life is organized. It's actually not a bad concept, but when they put this thing together, they forgot one minor detail--comedies are supposed to be FUNNY!!! The first episode of this show reminded me of that scene in "The Producers" after the "Springtime for Hitler" number ended: you see a shot of the several hundred people in the audience sitting stone-still, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, absolutely dumbfounded at the mind-numbing idiocy of what they had just seen. How Jason Alexander, the writers, the producers, the network, and anybody else who had anything to do with this show could have foisted it on an unsuspecting public is a complete mystery. Don't these people look at the episodes before they get broadcast? How could anyone who had seen this disaster waiting to happen let it go on the air? Did they actually think it was funny?

Fortunately, this train wreck of a show didn't last too long before it was yanked. Thank heaven for small favors.

Jason Alexander does a good job especially when he sells bad jokes by underplaying them. The problem is I don't think they were intended as bad jokes. Klein has his moments but he's better foiling than being a foil. Contrived comes to mind but some of the best sitcoms were built on contrived plots. If this show can come up with some new contrivences it may have a chance. But so far it hasn't made me believe it will.

This show is great! It has the humor of "Frasier" and the great cast of "Spin City." It deserves to make it into syndication, but probably won't because it's running against "Frasier," although ABC has no mid season shows planned.

The only person from my perspective of the 4 that remained relevant was the Veep actress. However, it took time and a horrible politic show to be relevant again.

Bob Peterson can't spark a spark. It was a no-go from the beginning.

Coffee at Monk's show was probably just good timing.

Bob Patterson actor is a great actor, so it's not him. I just think it was bad timing for these actors. Plus, companies lack creative skill.

Bob Peterson was not a good show.

The premise for this show was perfect for our times. Spoofing the "self-improvement motivational guru" phenomena could have run at least a second season if it'd been done right, until we as a society had moved on to something else.

However, writers hit and miss (nobody's perfect) and the final product here was a definite miss.

It'd have been nice to see Bob Paterson actually do a seminar or speak at a corporate sales meeting or weight-loss clinic or MLM gathering...it'd have been nice to hear how they spoof the blurb. The promotional work for this sitcom was heading in this better direction ("the only thing standing between you and your dreams is you...and your dreams").

It'd have been nice to see this Bob Paterson as a character with an air of invincibility, one who can't hear how silly he is, while he takes his work far too seriously. It'd have been nice to see him running his business successfully, but we the audience sit back and see the humor in the guru industry as a whole. It'd have been nice to see fresh intelligent insightful humor that didn't insult the audience's intelligence, rather than a bunch of bumblers standing around waiting for the setup to drop their tired cookie-cutter one-liners. With a legacy of such mature sitcomes as Seinfeld and Frazier (mature for their subtle plots, subtle body language, subtle dialogue that is funny without telling jokes or one-liners), Bob Paterson was poised to connect with a mature audience ready to laugh at good material.

Alas, all we got was a self-doubting, insecure high school student in an adult's body, a transplanted George Costanza, and poor cliched attempts at set-up one-liners that were just not funny.

It's too bad, it coulda, woulda, shoulda been great, but it wasn't, not at all.