It’s best to avoid ‘Friends From College’
Sometimes just the name of a show is a dead giveaway. Not every bland and generic title indicates a meandering and pointless series. Is there anything less specific than “Friends”? But trust me, the new Netflix series “Friends From College” is no “Friends.” It’s not even “Coupling.” Or “St. Elmo’s Fire.” Why isn’t somebody remaking “St. Elmo’s Fire”? I digress.
The best thing that can be said of “Friends From College” is that it sports an impressive, even extraordinary cast. The problem is, with few exceptions, that merely reminds us of their better, funnier projects.
The series opens with Ethan (Keegan-Michael Key) in bed with Sam (Annie Parisse). They enjoy a jokey intimacy that’s neither funny nor sexy, and we soon learn that they are cheating on their respective spouses.
Ethan, a critically acclaimed if obscure and underpaid author, surprises Sam by announcing that he and his wife, Lisa (Cobie Smulders), are moving back to New York, where he looks forward to reuniting with all their “Friends From College.”
These include Max (Fred Savage), Ethan’s editor, eager for him to break out of his “prestigious” ranks and sell more books. He’s so eager that he convinces Ethan to write a gimmicky novel for teens, something Ethan doesn’t share with Lisa.
Fans of “Key and Peele” will feel a special kind of agony watching Keegan-Michael Key uttering generic and utterly unconvincing dialogue about failing to be the genius novelist and voice of his generation that all his friends expected him to be when they were all at Harvard.
Oh yes, these folks went to Harvard, and they remind each other of that fact quite often.
Greg Germann (“Ally McBeal”) plays Sam’s smarmy corporate husband. He resents the cliquish nature and Ivy League name-dropping of his wife’s crew. He’s a dreadful one-note character, but appears to be honest about his resentments.
This isn’t the first series to trade in the arrested development of old friends and school pals. But the best of such series (“Friends” and “Seinfeld” come to mind) wrapped up before their characters entered their 40s, married and started families. “St. Elmo’s Fire” didn’t even get to the end of their first summer out of school!
Here we get to watch older, solidly middle-aged friends re-descend into undergraduate shenanigans. And it isn’t very pretty. Unless the sight of grown men tapping each other’s crotches as some kind of fraternity greeting is your idea of hilarious.
Look for Billy Eichner (“Billy on the Street,” “Difficult People”) as a fertility doctor with an icy bedside manner. Seeing Eichner so decaffeinated and restrained is one of the more amusing aspects to this effort. It’s almost funny.
OCEAN WONDERS
Also streaming on Netflix beginning today, the documentary “Chasing Coral,” a celebration of the ocean’s magnificent wonders and a warning about the phenomenon of coral bleaching, an indication of mass coral death caused by warming oceans as a result of carbon emissions.
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
› Auditions continue on “America’s Got Talent” (8 p.m., NBC, repeat, TV-PG).
› Like lamb chops to the skillet on “MasterChef” (8 p.m., Fox, repeat, TV-14).
› Entrepreneurs hope to open a drone flying academy on “Shark Tank” (8 p.m., ABC, repeat, TV-PG).
› Mariah Carey guest-stars on “Beat Shazam” (9 p.m., Fox, repeat, TV-PG).
› John Quinones hosts “What Would You Do?” (9 p.m., ABC, TV-PG).
› X Games (9 p.m., ESPN) coverage continues.
› A killer appears to have avenged a DWI fatality from decades past on “Blue Bloods” (10 p.m., CBS, repeat, TV-14).