NBC Sitcom 'Mr. Robinson' Proves August Is Still TV's Deadest Month

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Despite the networks’ assertions that the summer TV season is no longer to be considered a backwater of reruns, cheap reality shows and throwaway series not fit for the regular season, a new sitcom coming to NBC this week suggests otherwise.

It’s “Mr. Robinson,” a new comedy premiering on Wednesday (Aug. 5) that plays like a throwback to the era two or three decades ago when the broadcast networks seemed to blithely throw money at any show that came along, and didn’t mind tolerating something like a 90 percent failure rate.

So much for the possibility of an August surprise. On the contrary, “Mr. Robinson” won’t help this particular summer month shed its reputation as the deadest month of the year for TV.

Let me please emphasize that I had high hopes for “Mr. Robinson.” One reason was the impression suggested above (however misguided) that the networks are serious about programming quality shows in the summer. The other was the series’ lead, Craig Robinson, a reasonably likable personality who was previously seen in “The Office” on NBC and also starred in the “Hot Tub Time Machine” movies.

In “Mr. Robinson,” he plays Craig Robinson, a music teacher at an inner-city school in Chicago who moonlights as a local nightclub entertainer. He has a band called Nasty Delicious, which performs original songs that parody R&B love songs. These novelty numbers comprise the only portions of “Mr. Robinson” that you might consider creative. The rest of the show is pure sitcom dreck.

Or to put it another way, this show has everything most of us have come to expect from typical network sitcoms -- and I mean that in the worst way possible. Take the word “penis,” for example. It takes just a little over four minutes in the premiere episode for one of the characters in “Mr. Robinson” to get around to uttering this word for a male sex organ that is an obsession with TV sitcom writers today. It’s as if their membership in the Writers Guild would be revoked if they didn’t find a way to insert the word into sitcom scripts.

In the pilot of “Mr. Robinson” -- one of two back-to-back episodes NBC insists on foisting on all of us on Wednesday night -- it’s Spencer Grammer who gets the dubious “honor” of being the first to say “penis.” This actress -- the daughter of Kelsey Grammer – plays a math teacher who moonlights as a stripper. In the teachers’ lounge, she tells her fellow teachers about a student who drew his you-know-what on his test paper. “Well, I have to go and finish grading these penises!” she announces happily as she exits the scene.

It was very early in this show and I was already being made to think of how I might complain in this blog post about the “third-grade mentality” of this show’s writers. But then I realized that that would be an insult to third-graders.

For the record, guest-star Gary Cole, playing the role of a washed-up rock star, gets to say the p-word in the second episode of “Mr. Robinson” airing Wednesday. His line has to do with size – another obsession of sitcom writers that I will leave to their therapists to sort out.

Another word tossed around with even more abandon in “Mr. Robinson” is “bitch.” I realize this word is in wide use in the popular culture today, but the way it’s bandied about by characters ranging from young teen students to an assistant principal (played by Peri Gilpin) on “Mr. Robinson” is unseemly.

And while we’re on the subject, it was particularly disappointing to see Peri Gilpin, one of the stars of one of the most revered comedies in television history -- “Frasier” -- reduced to this. Here’s a line they gave her to say when her character first meets Mr. Robinson, who has come to her school as a substitute teacher for a week: “If you think you’re gonna walk in here with your sweet African musk and get over on me,” she says, “you are subbin’ in the wrong school, Shaft!” What? Where’d that come from?

After his week of substitute-teaching, Mr. Robinson gets offered a full-time position as the school’s music teacher, which left me wondering: Hey, what happened to the teacher he was subbing for? Is this person being fired for some reason? It’s a plot point the writers of “Mr. Robinson” might have found a way to address, perhaps even – heaven forbid – in a funny way.

If the writing on “Mr. Robinson” is inept, so is a good deal of the rest of this production – from the situations and ethnic stereotypes (ranging from an Indian-American science teacher to one male black student who, naturally, is the school delinquent) to the juvenile performers who make up Mr. Robinson’s classroom and who are so ill-trained that they cannot control themselves from noticeably smirking with self-satisfaction when they deliver their lines.

Sorry, NBC, but your August high school comedy gets an “F.”