I've been harping about it in the various NBC comedy threads, and around various places on the Internet, and while I'll defend this show til my lungs turn blue, I think this episode of Whitney is about as good as it gets. So please, if your opinion on the show is colored by it's multi-cam origins and lackluster pilot (Parks and Rec fans, feel my pain) episode, watch this.
I'll give you a bit of background, so you won't be lost (I don't think you would be anyways). Neil (Maulik Pancholy, aka Jonathan from 30 Rock) just broke off his engagement with Lily. Alex and Whitney live together but don't want to get married. Mark is the Joey of the gang, and Roxanne is the perpetually single female friend. Ready? Go.
MarvelousGerbil posted... I watched the first three episodes and still thought it was awful... That about as much as I will allow a show.
Then you must hate Parks and Rec.
That's what I'm saying. If we based our entire opinion of a 22 episode show on the first 3 episodes, or a 4 season show based on a shortened first season, we'd be missing the whole story.
Whitney was pretty bad for a while, I'll give you all that. But about halfway through the shows run, maybe a little after, something changed. There was less fighting in the relationship, not like the fights that you saw in the first few episodes, where your concern was "Are these people really meant to be together", but just little things, nothing major, teasing, even. Whitney and Alex evolved into a real couple. Sure, they have little bobbles every now and then, but at the end of the night, you can tell there's love in that relationship.
And it's not as Stand-up-y as those first few episodes. They're very much taken straight from Whitney Cummings' stand-up act, and it shows. But by the time this episode (20 out of 22) comes around, the characters around Whitney aren't just vessels for words to come out that make the jokes go, they're real characters. Mark evolved from a bad Barney Stinson wannabe chauvinist male into a guy with a bit of bravado, but ultimately, an incredibly loyal and ultimately kinda insecure guy. And Lily and Neil evolved from that lovey couple that made you sick because they were so in love into a real couple as well, with real issues that ultimately drove them apart. It's a show, things change, just like real life. If there's a second season, I'm sure that it will only get better, the writers seem to have a handle on the characters, and a solid direction for the show to go, now it's time to shove off and see just how far it can go.
I mean, compare Whitney to a show like 2 Broke Girls. Both premiered at the same time, both were based around female leads, and at the beginning, 2 Broke Girls was a critical favorite, and everyone loved its potential. But it didn't change. In the season finale, the characters were going through the same plots and same joke they did in did in the pilot. (and it doesn't help that 9 months of the show kinda exposed it as a breeding ground for bad racist stereotypes)
Give it a chance, watch it after it found it's footing.