1600 Penn
Episode 1: Putting Out
Fires
By: Carlos Uribe
1600
Penn is a show about a normal family that happens to reside in the
White House. I will be covering this show weekly.
Spoilers
Ahoy!
The idea of a comedy surrounding the family of the President isn't a
bad one but it can be risky. If any characters state political
opinions then there's the risk of alienating people who disagree with
them. A conservative doesn't want to watch entertainment with a clear
liberal bias and a liberal won't want to hear conservative jokes.
1600 Penn decides that it'll avoid that by not stating any political
views. It doesn't even bother to provide the President with a
political party. While this isn't necessarily a bad decision it is
one that does hurt the show. Politics is an immense part of the show
that not having the political position of at least the President
established makes it difficult to really buy into the show's reality.
The series doesn't even bother to state whether he's a Republican or
a Democrat. This move might help not alienate any people but it also
means that it leaves behind the opportunity to do any real political
satire. It's pretty clear that the series isn't interested in doing
that. There's nothing wrong with that but it does call into question
of why the White House. When people are going to hear about this
show, the first thought that's going to enter their mind is how it
handles the political realm. It's simply a way of setting people up
for disappointment. 1600 Penn is a show that isn't interested in the
politics as it concentrates very much on family.
This doesn't mean that it doesn't handle the Presidential duties. A
large part of the episode is concentrated on the President trying to
get a free trade agreement to pass. This part of the episode presents
a unique aspect of the Presidential job but it's completely in
service of the family element. It only exists so that Skip can prove
himself in the eyes of his father at the end of the episode. Most of
the other plots deal with family. The main protagonist, Skip, is a
screw-up whose attended college for the last seven years because he's
always three credits shy of graduating. The plot of the episode is
that the family decides it's time for him to come back home rather
than attend school. His step-mother, Emily, is trying her best to
integrate herself into the family after replacing their real mother.
The perfect daughter, Becca, has just found out she's pregnant while
Marigold (the young daughter) and Xander (the youngest son) have a
crush on the same girl. These set-ups make it feel like it's just a
family comedy set in the world of the White House but the promise is
how that world will be able to uniquely impact them. The real problem
with the pilot is the large amount of exposition it has to lay out in
order for it to work. This came at the cost of comedy and made it
feel very much like a television pilot. These are expected problems
for a pilot to have and hopefully the series will be able to improve
it's writing and become consistently funny.
One thing it's going to have to do is lay out the relationships
between the characters better. A large part of the show might be
because Skip kept screwing up but this is supposed to be grounded
because of his relationship with his dad. Skip wants to make his dad
proud. A large problem with this relationship element of the show is
that it's barely present. There isn't any time where Skip is allowed
to simply bond with his father. The one scene that comes closest to
that is really to serve the plot and set up the jokes but it doesn't
feel like a real father-son moment. Skip is certainly the central
character of the show but his relationships with the entire family
feels undefined. While Skip is a character that is best used with
restraint, the pilot at least should have used the focus on him to
develop the other characters. His interactions with his family never
really feel genuine because the show is so busy setting up plot
details. Those plot details mean little if we don't care about the
family. The show didn't need to have Skip save the trade agreement if
the pilot had made it so that Skip was the glue that held the family
together. It didn't do this: it was just a collection of Skip doing
crazy stuff and having to fix it. If the show had focused less on the
actual character of Skip and more establishing real relationships
Skip has with each family member then it would have been a much
better pilot.
What hurts 1600 Penn almost as much as the lack of any real family
moments and relationships is the lack of character depth. Skip is the
most developed character and he's a good one to base the show around
but it seems like his antics came at the cost of developing everyone
else. Emily's plight to connect with the family is good but we don't
really know enough about her situation or herself. She wants to
become a part of the family? That's great but what does Emily in
specific do in order to accomplish that? I can't answer that. The
characters talk about how great Becca is but her entire scenes are
overwhelmed by her discovery that she's pregnant. There's nothing
wrong with making her pregnant but the series is trying to establish
a character with a status quo that was changed as soon as we met her.
This makes it hard to connect with Becca or her situation. Marigold's
entire personality is defined by her discovery of her sexual
orientation. It's a big moment when she reveals that she has a crush
on the same girl as her brother but it doesn't have any impact
because we barely know her. At least she has a lesbian crush as a
definition as her little brother isn't given anything. Whose Xander?
I have no idea. Bill Pullman portrays a good President but it's hard
to buy he has convictions when we don't know his political beliefs.
Finally, the press secretary Marshall Malloy delivers deadpan humor
but that's basically it.
1600 Penn is a show that suffers from having too much plot while
trying to establish a series and characters. It could have pulled it
off if it had decided to concentrate less on Skip and more of his
relationships with each character. It doesn't and the series feels
very much like it's still in-the-works because of this. Future
episodes won't just have to work on being funny and continuing the
plot but also on some character work and relationship development
that this pilot was supposed to have done. This episode is funny-but
it proves that the series needs a lot of work in order to work on a
weekly basis.
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