Carpoolers aired from October 2007 until March 2008 on ABC.
Four guys who carpooled to work every day came to savor their commute as the only safe time to commiserate about jobs, families - and secrets. Even though "what happened in the carpool stayed in the carpool," they'd go beyond the boundaries of this fast-moving commuter confessional to get involved in each other's lives and develop friendships.
Gracen (Fred Goss) was the unofficial leader of the carpool pack. As a professional mediator, he thought that he was a problem solver, but more often he was a causer. He seeked fairness in an unfair world, and so found himself in the middle of situations because he was compelled to be there. In the pilot, Gracen was stunned to learn that his wife Leila ( Faith Ford) made more money than he did, which set him off.
Laird (Jerry O'Connell, ) was Gracen's playboy dentist neighbor and best friend. He thought his life was an unending quest for stories - and women. In the middle of a messy divorce, he allowed himself to live a little and taunted the other carpoolers with the freedom of his near-single status. He would never admit that he secretly missed his marriage. Laird constantly lead the carpoolers into adventures, but once there, he wasn't sure what to do.
Aubrey (Jerry Minor), )was a sweet but intense pushover at the bottom of the family food chain. The daily ride had become the only peaceful time in his life. Forty-five minutes, two times a day - he needed the carpool the most. Always quick to come to the carpoolers' aid, he believed in the brotherhood almost to a fault. Only the carpoolers knew he was boiling inside, because "in the carpool lane, no one can hear you scream."
Dougie (Tim Peper)) was the eager newlywed. He didn't know all the rules of the Carpooler Society, and had to have the ways of the world explained to him by his tribal elders, the three other carpoolers. He and his wife, Cindy ( Alison Munn ), were the perfect modern couple, but as you got to know them, you started to see their cracks. Dougie was the guy who seemed to have it all together, yet he was drawn to the carpoolers for a little excitement. The carpoolers would both instigate problems for Dougie and help him deal with the realities of life to come. Rounding out the cast was Gracen and Leila's adult son Marmaduke ( T. J. Miller).
A Review from Variety
Carpoolers
(Series -- ABC, Tue., Oct. 2, 8:30 p.m.)
By PHIL GALLO
Taped in Los Angeles by ABC Studios. Executive producers, Bruce McColloch, Barry Frank, Justin Falvey, David Miner, Anthony and Joe DeRusso; producer, Dan Kaplow; directors, Anthony and Joe Russo; writer, McColloch.
Gracen - Fred Goss
Laila - Faith Ford
Laird - Jerry O'Connell
Aubrey - Jerry Minor
Dougie - Tim Peper
Cindy - Allison Munn
Marmaduke - TJ Miller
Driving above the speed limit in the diamond lane toward "hiatus," "Carpoolers" is shockingly dull and unfunny with Fred Goss shoehorned in an uninspiring role. ABC was clearly desperate to find a show with a quartet of men; as unlikable as the guys are in "Big Shots," "Carpoolers" takes it one step further with a team of dullards commuting to a random office in L.A. This sitcom is a Sigalert in progress.
Show brims with stereotypes, even once we are lucky enough to get out of the car. One carpool of old-timers stops for no reason in the parking lot; the "rich carpoolers" are, for some odd reason, eating sushi for breakfast while they ruthlessly snag a parking space. And within the main characters, three of them are under a woman's thumb -- apparently getting through a marriage like it's a jail sentence.
The fourth, Dougie (Tim Peper), is blissed out in love with his wife, though others see his state-of-mind as temporary. The softest character of the batch, Dougie is also the newest member of the carpool.
Aubrey (Jerry Minor), whose wife watches TV all day while he readies the children -- it looks like there are at least six of them -- for school, is week one's driver. Marriage counselor Gracen (Fred Goss) is concerned that his wife (Faith Ford) has a higher income, while newly divorced Laird (Jerry O'Connell), a dentist who has lost everything except an exercise machine, is attempting to resolve Gracen's problem.
When Gracen returns home, his realtor wife is celebrating having flipped a house -- twice -- and his lay-about son suddenly has a well-paying job, too. Wife then learns she has flipped the house three times, which Gracen points out is impossible. Someone on the "Carpoolers" staff should have pointed out that this is not funny either.
O'Connell provides the lone reason to watch as his character strides the line between devious and well-intentioned. Laird is also the one man who appears to have any gumption -- or decent lines for that matter.
Sitcom feels like it was developed by committee and a research staff. One man is strong, dim and a bit sexy; one is hen-pecked; another is vacant and the fourth is bland. Faith Ford, of course, is bubbly. TJ Miller, who plays the dim-wit son Marmaduke, displays some sharp comic timing in the two episodes supplied, but it seems unlikely his character will be used for much more than a punching bag.
Despite having credits directing episodes of the brilliant "Arrested Development," the Russo brothers, Joe and Anthony, deliver a flat effort here. Show was created by Bruce McColloch, a veteran writer-actor who parlayed his Kids in the Hall experience into a stint on "Saturday Night Live" in the mid-1990s.
A Review from USA TODAY
'Carpoolers' crashes before getting out of the driveway
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
Is ABC trying to kill the sitcom? What links its shows beyond their failure to amuse is their level of artifice. In style, tone, plot and technique, they erect so many absurd barriers between the characters and the audience, you need a jackhammer to break through. Take Carpoolers, which has the titular carpoolers compete with a "fancy" carpool in which the commuters eat sushi.
Granted, the decade hasn't exactly been a laugh-fest bonanza for anyone. But when it comes to complete comic futility, ABC is in a class of its own.
No ABC sitcom has ended the season in the Top 20 since Dharma & Greg in 2000, and none has been nominated for the best-comedy Emmy since Home Improvement in 1994. It's as if ABC has decided to sit the century out.
The problem isn't just that ABC sitcoms fail; on TV, failure is the default position. It's that so many in the past few years have failed in the exact same way.
The network has developed an inexplicable affection for a particular kind of slice-of-dull-life filmed sitcom. Shows such as Help Me Help You, Emily's Reasons Why Not, Big Day or In Case of Emergency just meander along, occasionally wandering close to something funny but never quite getting there.
Say this for the network's unpreviewed Cavemen: It may be lousy, but at least it will be different.
What links these shows beyond their failure to amuse is their level of artifice. In style, tone, plot and technique, they erect so many absurd barriers between the characters and the audience, you need a jackhammer to break through.
Take Carpoolers, which has the titular carpoolers compete with a "fancy" carpool in which the commuters eat sushi. One of the guys has a big, dumb-lump son named Marmaduke who never wears pants.
Even if those jokes were funny — and they're not — they immediately take you out of the world the show is trying to create.
Not that we would want to be in that world in the first place. Stuck in a car with four ridiculously boring men, singing along to the radio as they drive? That's not a show, it's a threat.
As for those men, each is a more ridiculous "type" than the other. Gracen (Fred Goss, from one of ABC's more noble flops, Sons and Daughters) is a mediator who worries that his wife (Faith Ford) is getting the upper hand in their marriage, as indeed she is. Aubrey (Jerry Minor) is a soft-spoken, henpecked, African-American nerd (a variation on the much more amusing character from Malcolm in the Middle). Laird (Jerry O'Connell) is an overly confident ladies' man, and Dougie (Tim Peper) is the newlywed newbie.
Tonight, you're asked to believe the gang would break into Gracen's house and steal his toaster. Next week, you have to believe Gracen would loan his wedding ring to Laird so he can pick up a woman who dates only married men.
But then, ABC also believes we'll watch this every week. And that labeling it a "man date" somehow makes it more enticing.
Goss is poorly used here, and O'Connell is pushing too hard.
But the trouble with Carpoolers goes way beyond a few strained performances or an ill-chosen corporate style. The show is so painfully witless and dull, your daily commute may begin to seem entertaining in comparison.
That's great for us, I guess. For the sitcom, not so much.
A Review from The Post Gazette
TV Review: Shallow 'Carpoolers' stalls
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
By Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Hidden beneath conventional plots and stereotypical characters, there's a funny show struggling to emerge from ABC's "Carpoolers" (8:30 tonight, WTAE) but it's not about carpoolers or any of the main characters. It's the slacker son of one of the main characters who brings the funny to an otherwise patented ABC CSDC (Comedy Series Devoid of Comedy).
The concept for "Carpoolers" is inherently limited because, well, there's little that's actually funny about guys who ride to work together in the same car. Even throwing standard sitcom stories at it doesn't help (the jealous husband who gets his comeuppance, the deceitful husband who gets his comeuppance).
The characters, too, are all types. There's middle-aged white guy, Gracen (Fred Goss), who feels impotent when he suspects his wife (Faith Ford) earns more than he does; super-dad Aubrey (Jerry Minor), whose wife is lazy, requiring him to be the primary breadwinner and caretaker of their many, many children; divorced ladies' man Laird (Jerry O'Connell) and over-eager newcomer Dougie (Tim Peper).
Written by Bruce McCullough (one of the "Kids in the Hall"), there's little that's surprising let alone interesting about "Carpoolers" despite the best efforts of an enthusiastic cast, most notably O'Connell. The show's one area of success is in its attempts to be absurd, but it tiptoes so gently into that realm that's it's easy to miss it.
In tonight's premiere, there's a scene in a parking lot where the carpool gets frustrated by a Geezer Carpool that moves too slowly. The guys are also challenged for a parking space by the Fancy Carpool that drives a more expensive car. The notion of different carpool types is kind of fun and could bear some comedic fruit if drawn out to an absurd degree, but "Carpoolers" just hints at it.
Likewise, the introduction of Gracen's slacker son, Marmaduke (T.J. Miller), doesn't seem like cause for much notice in tonight's premiere, but a future episode reveals him to be the show's only saving grace. The writers obviously realize this, too, and appear to be writing more for the character in that subsequent episode.
Marmaduke is a dumb, overgrown baby, and yet Miller also endows him with a degree of sweetness. His leaps of logic and uncanny knack for worming his way into a plot that begins with the carpool members make him memorable.
But sticking with the show and digging into it to find appreciation in a secondary character is more work than should be required and asks more than most viewers are willing to give. For that reason, "Carpoolers" is a trip to skip.
An Article from USA TODAY
Life's a smooth ride for 'Carpooler' Jerry O'Connell
By William Keck, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — Jerry O'Connell has a nickname on the set of his ABC sitcom, Carpoolers.
"It's the big joke on my set. Everyone on Carpoolers refers to me as 'Stamos,' " says the actor, 33, who first connected with audiences as a child in 1986's Stand By Me.
"Stamos," of course, is a devilish nod to John Stamos, the ex-husband of O'Connell's wife, Rebecca Romijn.
The ribbing is all in fun.
"I think it's pretty funny, too," says Romijn, who plays the transgender character Alexis Meade on ABC's Ugly Betty. "And you know who's going to think it's the funniest out of everyone? Stamos. That's right up his alley."
But Romijn prefers her own nicknames for her husband, none of which she intends to share, explaining, "Jerry would never live it down if I made those public."
The entire cast of Carpoolers and many from Ugly Betty were in attendance on July 14 when O'Connell wed Romijn in their backyard, alongside the vineyard he planted for her in 2006. After weathering a bad frost last winter, their vines are now bearing little grapes he describes as "the size of raisins. I'm not strange (to the point) where I go down and talk to my grapes, but I do feel a bond with them."
That sense of humor is one reason Carpoolers creator Bruce McCulloch cast the New York University grad in the role after the two became friends. "He's kind and sweet and just a little bit dirty, so I thought that he would be perfect to play Laird, the lothario dentist," says McCulloch.
"A Divorce to Remember" is the title of tonight's Carpoolers (8:30 ET/PT), which guest stars Romijn as Joannifer, the boozy ex-wife of O'Connell's Laird.
"Joannifer is basically a floozy, and Rebecca can pull off playing a floozy," O'Connell says over lunch. "She has a lot of hair and is very buxom. But I know she makes a conscious effort to not be that girl. So for her to play this crazy maniac ex-wife was a lot of fun."
"I never play the boring pretty girl," clarifies Romijn, calling from home. But the former model, who turns 35 today, acknowledges that, "behind closed doors, I've been practicing aspects of this character for years."
Despite their guest appearances on each other's shows (he appeared on Betty last season as a jerk who hit on Romijn's Alexis in a bar), the two have mostly steered clear of working together, and their reps declined a joint interview.
"I think we get a little concerned about that Gigli factor — it's scary," he says, referring to the film Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez made when they were a couple. "You don't want to worry about hitting people over the head with it. But we have so much fun together."
She adds: "We decided if we're going to work together, we don't want to be love interests, per se," she adds.
But there is another project they are working on that 100% requires them to be love interests — becoming parents. (They joke that Romijn's character's past as a man will make it challenging to write her pregnancy into Betty's plot.)
The couple recently went out to dinner with Betty producer Marco Pennette and explored their options about a future pregnancy.
"It could be a hysterical pregnancy," Romijn theorizes. "There are people who want to be pregnant so badly that they put on weight in that area. Or maybe Alexis could put on a tremendous amount of weight, and I'd wear a fat suit around the pregnancy."
But first things first.
"We're definitely working at it," O'Connell says. "It's never as easy as everybody thinks. It just isn't. When you're married to Rebecca, you should try to have as many children as possible," he adds. "And I want to do that before she figures out that she could do a lot better than me."
"That's a very sweet and strange thing to say," she says. "Jerry is an amazing guy."
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