TV Review: Notes from the Underbelly

I’m going to try and be nice here, soft spoken, and not overly rude. It’s hard because what I have to discuss is just dreadfully bad, but I’m going to try anyway. 

Of the many shows I watched last night, one of them was Notes from the Underbelly. If I was being mean I’d call this an “alleged sitcom,” but as I’m trying not to be mean I’ll say “ABC’s brand new sitcom that started airing last night.” The story revolves around a couple, Lauren (Jennifer Westfeldt) and Andrew (Peter Cambor), who have decided to have a baby. Lauren and Andrew are a self-centered couple living in Los Angeles with incredibly self-centered friends and are wholly and completely unlikable. Andrew is slightly less unlikable than Lauren, but mostly that’s because he seems like your average self-centered individual instead of incredibly self-centered like his wife. 

Simply put, these people should not be having kids. Their married couple friends, Julie (Melanie Deanne Moore) and Eric (Sunkrish Bala), who are incredibly pregnant, probably also shouldn’t be having kids. Julie and Eric seem like they’re having them for the right reasons, whereas I don’t believe for a second that Lauren and Andrew aren’t simply having children because 1) it’s trendy and 2) they want to be done with having children in time to have a nice retirement. 

Lauren and Andrew also have a couple of single friends, Danny (Michael Weaver) and Cooper (Rachel Harris). These two characters are even more adolescent than Lauren and Andrew. Their only purpose over the course of last night’s two episodes was to make the main characters seem more well-grounded and adult-like. It didn’t work — all the characters depicted seemed far too juvenile.   

It was referenced several times during the course of last night’s back-to-back episodes that they are a couple in their early 30s and that these days that’s equivalent to what being in your 20s was years ago. This is really just an argument for self-centeredness and increasing the amount of time one can have “youthful indiscretions” rather than simply being acknowledged as being a bad person. I’m not against negative shows, and I’m certainly not against negative characters. However, Lauren and Andrew, as depicted in Notes from the Underbelly, aren’t caricatures, they aren’t over the top, they seem to actually represent someone’s view of where our society is, and that to state at the same time that where we are (self-centered and perpetually juvenile) is acceptable. 

Article Author: Josh Lasser

Josh Lasser, formerly known as "TV and Film Guy," and complete with a Masters Degree in Critical Studies in said areas, gives his opinions on TV, Film, and Entertainment in general. All of which he does in a shameless attempt to try to get paid to do the exact same thing. …

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