I REALLY expected to like Fox’s The Good Guys which premiered last night. It’s an action comedy starring two actors I love to watch: Colin Hanks and Bradley Whitford. They’re kind of down and out cops trying to do their thing, so it’s also a bit of an underdog story. Unfortunately I found the show to be almost unwatchable. See, the concept behind the first episode is that Hanks (a by the books guy) and Whitford (a crazy dumbass) are trying to bust a car thief ring, but it turns out that SPOILER a woman from the task force is actually working with the dude running the ring. The show employs an incredibly annoying flashback device where, right after something happens in the present, they pause, throw up a period of time later, show that scene and then come right back to show you the present scene again. Aside from being jarring, most of the stuff didn’t seem all that necessary to explain. This isn’t Lost, I don’t need to see how Whitford made the car burst through the window.

The worst part of the series, though, is Whitford’s ridiculous performance. He’s a cop who doesn’t understand how computers work. Okay, that’s not so bad. But it doesn’t end there. When the computer gets a virus he says something like “Computers can’t get sick.” And later is literally hopping mad, screaming at a laptop. Honestly, it seems like he’s trying to play the character as slightly mentally handicapped. It’s uncomfortable.

So, unless I hear some good things down the road I won’t be returning to The Good Guys and I can only blame the writers for taking a good concept and crapping it out in the very first episode.