Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing So Here’s What Happened, which aired on CBS in 2006.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

The first and only episode of this show has one message for all the mooks out there.  And that message is …. NEW YORK, BABY!

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by Michael Lembeck, aired on May 1st, 2006)

What to say about Vince Brophy (Bobby Cannavale)?  Hey, he’s a New Yorker, you know what I mean?  Hey, he starts every sentence by saying, “Hey,” y’know?  He knows the name of every single athlete who ever played for a New York sports team, y’know?  He meets a woman named Rochelle Jeter (Rashida Jones) and immediately asks her if she’s related to Derek Jeter, you know what I’m saying?  She says, “Yeah,” and she’s being sarcastic but Vince thinks that she’s being serious because who in their right mind would come into the old neighborhood and make a sarcastic joke, y’know?

Vince is such a New Yorker that he narrates the entire episode while sitting in his favorite barber chair.  His barber (Hector Elizondo) hangs on his every word, which is good since he presumably can’t see the flashbacks that the audience is forced to sit through.  Vince works at his family’s car lot and he wears solid suits and pinky rings and the pilot finds several excuses for him to say the word “Escalade.”  He’s not smart but he’s a stand-up guy, that Vince.  His co-worker asks him to be the godfather to his newborn and Vince agrees but then he nearly drowns the kid at the christening because he gets distracted when someone tells him that Derek Jeter don’t have no sister named Rochelle.  What a New Yorker!, y’know what I’m saying?

There’s a lot of talented people in this show.  Rashida Jones was months away from appearing on The Office.  Hector Elizondo is a comedy veteran.  Steve Park, a favorite of the Coen Brothers, appeared as Vince’s boss.  Mercedes Ruehl plays Vince’s mother.  And then you’ve got Bobby Cannavale in the lead role.  Cannavale is one of my favorite actors, a guy who is as good at playing sensitive as he is at playing tough.  Cannavale can play drama and he can play comedy and he’s easy on the eyes.  Unfortunately, all of these talented people were let down by a script that was written by none other than Paul Reiser.

The main problem with the show is that none of the characters have much of a personality beyond being from New York.  Obviously, New Yorkers are a unique group of people but every New Yorker I’ve met has also had their own individual personality to go along with their identity of being a citizen of America’s largest city.  The characters in this episode, on the other hand, have no identity beyond being a New Yorker in the most cliched ways possible.  Even worse, none of the jokes are particularly funny.  Vince crosses the line from being amiably dumb to being a buffoon far too quickly.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this was the only episode of this show.  The pilot did not lead to a series.  Fortunately, everyone involved went on to better things, y’know?