The Medium is Not Enough

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.”

For me, Aliens in America has been the surprise show of this year’s Fall season. A programme about a Pakistani exchange student who comes to middle America and encounters prejudice and ignorance wherever he goes? Sounds… great, huh?

However, it’s actually been the funniest new comedy of the season so far, and surprisingly touching as well. Much of the comedy stems from Raja’s failure to understand the local townspeople’s War on Terror-induced fear of him. But it’s also his friendship with Justin, the host family’s son, and the meaner rules of American High School culture that provide the laughs. Raja can’t really get to grips with lying, holding back on declaring his love for his friend in case people think him gay and all the other lessons Justin’s already learnt the hard way at High School.

Although we haven’t quite re-attained the highs of the first episode, the second and third episodes have been almost as funny and often cut quite near the knuckle, with the third episode in particular raising a few eyebrows with its daring, post-9/11. While Raja is really a little too good to be true, achieving near-Angelic status in his attitudes and behaviour, he’s still sufficiently complex to avoid becoming a simple liberal counter-stereotype.

If you fancy a laugh and don’t mind watching a show that’s mostly about teenagers, I heartily recommend Aliens in America.

The Medium is Not Enough scored a 1 or “Caruso free” rating on The Carusometer. A “Caruso free” rating corresponds to a show that David Caruso might accidentally get sent a script for. After failing to persuade the producers that his acting talents are more than capable of convincing people that he’s a 16-year-old Pakistani student, he declares the show un-American and tries to have it banned. The notoriety only makes the show’s ratings increase, something that happens even more when he tries to randomly search the cast for ‘weapons-grade fertilizer’ as they go home each evening.