How Good(win) are These Games? (Remote Control Freak)
I’m a pretty big fan of How I Met Your Mother. The characters are fun, they utilize flashbacks, foreshadows and running jokes that play out sometimes seasons later. Plus, it helped re-launch the career of everyone’s favorite teenage doctor.
It seemed to me to be such an original concept that it took me several seasons and someone else to tell me it was basically Friends in a bar instead of a coffee house. Whatever, I loved Friends too.
The concept of having an end game in mind though – Meeting the Mother – is something that I really appreciate. It constantly moves the plot forward and gives us something to look forward to.
So when I heard that a new show by the same creators of one of my favs was going to be a mid-season replacement on FOX, I was stoked.
The Goodwin Games has another unique, end game concept. Three estranged siblings are brought together by their recently deceased dad (Beau Bridges) after they discover he’s left one of them a $23 million inheritance.
The catch? They have to complete a series of games until one is somehow announced the winner.
The first game is a customized version of Trivial Pursuit about the lives of the Goodwins as they grew up together. So far, that’s taken up the first two episodes.
I’m sure that once there’s a winner of this game, there will be another game and another until dead daddy is satisfied his kids have learned enough life lessons and they’ve turned into the family he’s always wished they would be. Blah blah blah
None of them especially want to be there, but even by the second episode they’re all starting to realize they need to change their ways and become better people. Yet still they only stick around to beat the others out for daddy’s fortune. So that’s a conundrum.
The Goodwins are comprised of: Scott Foley from Felicity fame, T.J. Miller, a comedian I’ve seen once on Chelsea Lately but probably won some kind of game show to kickstart his career and Becki Newton, best known as Barney’s ex-fiancé & stripper Quinn Garvey on How I Met Your Mother.
Right now I’m going to give them maybe another two episodes before I call it quits. It’s predictable, the acting isn’t great and they’re using the same Universal back lot that How I Met Your Mother uses (also used for Gilmore Girls, I might add – I know because daughter Goodwin was sitting right there on Lorelai’s porch) without any attempt to make it look like somewhere else. That’s just annoying.
I’m hoping this show will work out its first few episode hiccups and end up being good enough to make up for the fact that all the Bays/Thomas creative energy was spent realizing this concept, leaving us with a nearly unwatchable second to last season of HIMYM.