Television Sneak Peek: Men of a Certain Age

Starring: Ray Romano, Scott Bakula, Andre Braugher
TNT, Mondays at 10:00 PM
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Let's be clear from the start. I'm probably not the target audience for this show. For one thing, I'm a woman, and I think (though I'm not 100% sure) this show is for men. My best guess is that it's kind of a Sex and the City for men, but I don't know that for sure either because (a) I never watched Sex and the City, and (b) I'm not entirely sure what would count as a male version of that show. But three male friends (of a certain age) meeting at a booth at a local diner . . . That seems pretty close, right?

Okay, so I received a USB drive in the mail with an episode of this show on it for review. I can't tell if what I watched was the entire thing. It ran about 19 minutes, so . . . If this is going to be an hour-long drama (and I can't seem to find an answer to that on the TNT site), then clearly I didn't see the whole thing. Even if it's a half hour, there may have been some material cut. If that's NOT the case, then the editing on this show is wonky. In the sneak peek, the three friends go for a hike . . . But then you never actually see them do any hiking. So either this is a really badly handled plot point OR there was material missing from the episode.

The show is a drama. Not a bit of what I viewed had any amount of comedy in it. There were a couple things that maybe were supposed to be funny, but none of it was.

If the show is aimed at men, I should point out that my husband watched it with me and really disliked it. During a scene in which the three characters are riding in a truck (on the way to the unseen hike), my husband suggested the whole thing would be better if they were in Jurassic Park and one—or all—of them were eaten by dinosaurs.

It's a shame because I like these actors. And maybe 19 minutes just isn't enough time to flesh out everything in an appealing way. Three complex characters cannot be shown in full in such a short time.

This is the problem with television these days, the need for instant gratification and instant audience and instant success. People want their television like they want anything: immediately. If it could be injected into our eyeballs, maybe we'd be satisfied. But the slow build towards something—that jeopardizes a show because people lose interest in the first few minutes. And then the show is canceled after one airing and never gets the chance to gain traction.

Still, I wouldn't watch this show. I'm sure someone, somewhere would, but it's not for me.