Dr. Ken

Jeong, however, is still too much of a standup comedian, belting out punchlines and pratfalls like a machine-gun to drown out the heckler in the back, to sustain Dr. Ken beyond sketch-level comedy. And he's too manic (a self-proclaimed "five-foot-five inches of fury") to allow for much help from the rest of the cast.

The show’s other players gently orbit Jeong’s bright star and are sometimes scorched by his flares of humor in an otherwise formulaic sitcom with its canned laughter and bright, uniformly lit set.

The Dr. Ken pilot is a tough watch--a relentlessly mediocre and formulaic half-hour of family comedy that appears to have no aspirations to satire.

On the down side, everything about it is equally generic, and one could argue that ABC’s “Fresh Off the Boat” is much richer because it makes the show specific to the Asian-American experience without sacrificing those universal qualities. Either way, the series feels about as bland as the decor in a hospital waiting room.

There is talent in the supporting cast, and an opportunity to tell stories other sitcoms can't. But so far, at least, that talent and opportunity are being wasted.

Its problem is too much Ken Jeong. His manic energy takes over every frame of the pilot, at the expense of anything and anyone else in the show.

The pilot starts with a gag about hemorrhoids. Things trend downward. [2 Oct 2015, p.68]

Even in an especially bad season for new shows, the multi-camera sitcom Dr. Ken stands out as uncomfortable, unfunny, and forgettable.

It’s standard sitcom stuff, but those elements don’t mesh well enough on the series even to reach that low Friday-night bar.... Dr. Ken is disjointed and, worse, not really funny.

A family comedy has to have heart and humor, and Dr. Ken has neither.

Through the two episodes I've seen, there are ample components that could be the basis for a good sitcom, and even the show's biggest flaw is not without potential, but the alignment is so out-of-sync that it's easier to imagine viewers tuning out at the first commercial break than sticking around for 13 or 22 episodes to see if Dr. Ken becomes the best, or even a better, version of itself.

It’s a staid, old-fashioned family comedy through and through. It’s by far the worst of the bunch--it’s just dreadfully unfunny.

Dr. Ken lacks any of the warmth, subtlety or cleverness of network sibling Fresh Off the Boat, instead relying on listless sitcom clichés and broad, obvious jokes (accompanied by loud, unwarranted audience laughter). It’s completely tone-deaf when it comes to depicting modern youth culture, and it wastes talented supporting players.

"I know that there are some disturbing and repetitive shows out there," a cardboard cutout of a side character mentions in Dr. Ken's inexorably humorless pilot. Oh, you have no idea.

Less funny than a compound fracture, this is a show that looks irreparably broken.

At home, Dr. Ken is just another sitcom-patented dumb daddy, although with an added shading of self-absorption. Mr. Jeong’s performance can best be described as over-the-top back around the other side and over-the-top a second time.

It's a show that confuses loudness with funniness. Jeong himself screams every line, and the studio audience howls back, particularly when Jeong does his faux-rapper voice. It's crass and phony, and everything people say they hate about multi-camera comedies.

Note the parade of cliche characterizations (the way-too-understanding wife who gazes upon her dim guy with affectionate he's-a-dope-but-he's-my-dope amusement). Also the schlock writing.