Year: 2007

In retrospect, it was must have been pure masochism that led me to hold out for a fifth episode verdict on Back To You. Maybe it was Kelsey Grammer’s presence. Maybe the third episode caught me in a good mood. Whatever it was, it was a mistake, and now I’ve wasted 50 minutes more of my life.

This is awful. It is unoriginal, unfunny, over-acted, unlikeable rubbish. Do not watch it unless you like the idea of being placed in the village stocks and having rotten tomatoes thrown in your face – because that’s how enjoyable it is. Even the retro “filmed in front of a live studio audience” voiceover at the beginning à la Cheers cannot redeem it. If there’s any justice in the world, it would be cancelled right now, all surviving copies placed in a bin and then incinerated.

So The Medium Is Not Enough has great pleasure in declaring Back To You has scored a five or ‘Full Caruso’ on The Carusometer quality scale. A Full Caruso corresponds to “a show in which David Caruso might be responsible for every aspect of production, including starring, directing, producing and writing it. After casting himself as a veteran newscaster who snarls every story and can’t read the prompter because he’s wearing sunglasses, he’s forced first to bribe the audience to laugh at his frequent blonde jokes then to threaten to have them put in jail for ‘all the crimes they’ve no doubt committed’ if they don’t so much as giggle. However, when the show is aired in Eastern Europe and its frequent jokes about Albanians are translated, the country declares war on Caruso, forcing him to to change his identity and pretend to be an Alpaca breeder in Patagonia. The show is cancelled in his absence, and peace and goodwill once again return to the Earth.”

Oh, it’s just arse. I said just about everything that needed to be said back with episode one. There’s the germ of a good idea in there – four guys sharing a car and talking about life – and when the show does raise laughs, which it does infrequently, it’s always through the scenes set in the car.

It’s just when it steps out of the car and into the carpoolers’ home life, it becomes complete rubbish. With the slight exception of TJ Miller as the son of one of the carpoolers, there’s just no comedy in the ridiculous situations that the writers have created. There could be, but there isn’t.

Three episodes are enough. I’m out. I’m not watching it any more.

The Medium is Not Enough hereby declares Carpoolers is a 4 or “Major Caruso” on The Carusometer quality scale. A Major Caruso corresponds to “a show that David Caruso might exec produce or star in after sitting in his SUV for a few hours. After he insists one episode be entirely about the pine-scented air-freshner that hands from the rearview mirror, the cast will rebel, phoning for an ambulance claiming that he’s got carbon monoxide poisoning. They’ll be gone by the time he returns, leaving him to conduct a 25-minute long monologue instead about the need for capital punishment for anyone who forgets to indicate before changing lanes on the freeway.”