NBC aired a special premiere of the new sitcom 1600 Penn on Monday night December 17 at 9:30p.m, hoping to give fans a sneak peek at what is to come this January. The show, which is considered NBC’s attempt to match the wildly popular rival sitcom ABC’s Modern Family, is about the dysfunctional first family living in the White House and how Dale Gilchrist, the President of the United States, tries to balance his presidency and the chaos of his family.
The Presidents’ family consists of his new young wife Emily Nash Gilchrist, who is desperate for her step-children to like her, and his kids Skip, Becca, Marigold, and Xander. Skip, the eldest child, is the overweight fool who means well but is oblivious to his back-firing actions and always finds a way to screw things up. Through the first episode it is obvious that Skip is the central focus for comedy; he is also comparable to the character Phil Dunphy from Modern Family.
The pilot episode showed Skip as he burned down his college fraternity house (where he lived the last 7 years) and returned to live with his family in the White House. His character is established as the one who always finds ways to mess things up and, by the end of the episode, he screws up a game of tennis between his father and a South American leader over the stakes of a trade negotiation.
With ABC’s Modern Family being a huge-hit throughout its four seasons on television NBC is hoping to match their rivals success with what is already being called the next Modern Family. However, while 1600 Penn has molded their characters after Modern Family, what the show lacks is a good funny storyline. Throughout the entire pilot the show seemed to look for cheap laughs with one-liners and Skip’s screw ups, yet all they did was make the show look desperate for laughs. Even the easily humored would be disappointed, as the entirety of the show just seemed to drag on.
However, there are a few hopes and upsides to 1600 Penn, first being that this was only the pilot. The audience has not yet gotten a chance to really get to know the characters, so the show could become much funnier. Even the character of Skip has the potential to be very funny, and if the writers can give actor Josh Gad some clever and funny lines, the character could shine.
Despite these small hopes for the show, there is still a lot that needs to improve. 1600 Penn may has been coined the next Modern Family, but it has a long way to go before it can even be in the same conversation.
