Pardon the odd poster. Not sure what they're going for here, this looks like a dang horror thing. It isn't! It's a comedy. On TBS! Very funny. This family of four has normal faces, not upside down ones.
Anyway, I love the rebrand TBS has gone through over the last year or so. Angie Tribeca was a welcome surprise to kick off 2016, and then Search Party was just a delight in the fall, and I still haven't seen People of Earth (Sween - should I?) and somewhere along the way I lost track of what might be the best pure comedy I've seen in a while - The Detour, a Jason Jones and Samantha Bee creation about a family on a road trip from Syracuse to Florida.
Or at least it starts out that way. It ends up being - quickly becomes, really - a story about a giant corporate conspiracy and one recently fired man's quest to save his job by unraveling it all while lying to his family about the whole thing.
If that sounds trite or generic or "been there, done that," it's because it absolutely is and you absolutely have. But that's part of the charm here! This isn't a reinvention or a reboot of a family road trip comedy, nor is it an inversion or a spoof or a parody - it's just a straight attempt at the genre done very well, very consistently. Sure, the dad's an oaf, the mom's a lush, the son's a hopeless idiot, the daughter's awkward and smart, and the road trip's made up of delay after pit stop, pit stop after delay - hence the title. This is, truly, like so much else that's come before it - the Vacation movies, The Simpsons, Family Guy, what have you. But it works! It's funny. It's a crowdpleaser, I'm sure.
Here's a minute-long clip from the pilot. It's a scene with a premise you've seen and heard a million times before ("the talk!") but I think it pretty adequately captures the pace and rhythm and comic sensibilities of the show. You be the judge! I'm on board for the second season, which is airing right now.
Oh yeah, the clip:
Enjoy!
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