The Great Indoors

The series, created by Mike Gibbons, really is funny, which is the important part. But it’s also very smart, given the generally older demographic for broadcast TV. ... The cast is great, especially Fry, but Fielding doesn’t quite have the right chemistry with McHale to be the potential frenemy love interest. She doesn’t seem quite formidable enough in the role.

It all rings just true enough to be fairly funny; the pilot episode comes across as a way to poke harmless fun across the divide [between millennials and Generation X].

Jack is no Jeff, and this series, an old-school set-up-punch-line comedy, is no “Community.” That said, there are plenty of good laughs, and the show is an equal-opportunity roaster.

Neither [Man With a Plan or The Great Indoors] is groundbreaking or particularly exciting; both are quite likable and solidly constructed.

The pilot is a bit clunky setting all this up (there’s also Jack’s local bartender and friend, Eddie, played by Chris Williams), but the actors are all pretty sharp, as are the cross-generational jokes.

When its cast is interacting as characters, and not boogeymen born on the op-ed page, The Great Indoors is worth subscribing to.

The Great Indoors would benefit from better writing, of course.

It doesn't require an overdeveloped sense of empathy to see that, for anybody under 40, the show is going to feel less like a comedic experience than the receiving end of a gang-bang.

If The Great Indoors can maintain a balance of smart, and not tired, barbs lobbed between “the human version of dial-up” and the “stupid twentysomethings” with whom he must now work, there surely is a show here.

In the pilot, some of the lines even find their mark--assuming the intended mark are sites like BuzzFeed, Digg, Cracked, Reddit, Upworthy and so on. But the millennial jokes quickly grow stale, along with their “what is it with these kids” setups.

The problem here isn’t that Great is making fun of millennials: No generation gets blanket immunity from mockery. It’s that it’s doing so in such predictable, worn out fashion.

McHale, the “Community” veteran, is enjoyable. The jokes aren’t bad, and it’s fun having Fry as the out-of-touch editor. Based on the first episode, though, the show is hit and miss. The premise is stretched every which way, but somehow Indoors seem a bit claustrophobic.

There some modest laughs wrung out of this generational clash.

The Great Indoors isn't a great show, but it has possibilities.

After his good work on “Community,” McHale is slumming with this one-joke piece of network business.

A shallow and essentially flat show. ... The show's lone saving grace is Stephen Fry as Roland.

Whether Roland's cuddling a bear cub in Thursday's pilot or joking with Jack about the best ways to drink your own urine, he [Stephen Fry], and his chemistry with McHale, are the least tired things about a show that's still finding its way in a brave-ish new world.

British comic actor Stephen Fry is the best part of The Great Indoors, playing the company’s top honcho but his presence alone isn’t enough to salvage this stale series. A second episode proves to be no improvement on the lackluster pilot.

McHale's gift with sarcasm makes some of the stale punchlines work and he's always willing to look like a fool as long as he simultaneously looks good doing it.

While there may be some hidden truths in the intended comedy, the scenes often come across as judgemental and ill-conceived.

It’s aimed at millennials yet making fun of them constantly, and aimed at McHale fans while putting the star in his least-flattering light.

This is a hilariously staid, old-school, laugh-track sitcom about a man whose only purpose is to grit his teeth and gripe about young people. It’d be funny, if it weren’t so, well, unfunny--hokey stereotypes just don’t make for compelling comedy.

It’s a lack of humor that’s only more unbelievable the further you delve into it, and the more you realize no quality talent can make up for a lack of quality jokes.

The sitcom could have a little bit of melancholic sweetness to it, but The Great Indoors instead takes it upon itself to issue value judgments on an entire generation of people, and the result is perplexing and off-putting. It makes for a rather uncomfortable half-hour, where the audience is asked to identify with an undermining, insulting protagonist.

Jack technically is a Gen Xer. But he might as well be the Quaker Oats man in the eyes of millennials getting the same broad brush treatment. It’s a wonder they can even feed themselves in a comedy that force-feeds its concept and swallows McHale whole in the process.