I’m a little embarrassed to say that I’m not always sure what the social function of sitcoms is, though I’m sure that there is one, and about as sure that it’s not as nefarious as early critics of television assured us that it would be. I’m just as embarrassed to say that I had never even heard of Less Than Perfect before I got it to review, in spite of the fact that it aired on ABC for four years (it’s kind of hard to call yourself in touch with the culture at large with a slip-up like that). Nevertheless, I’m certain that Less Than Perfect does exactly what sitcoms seem to be for: provide you with a familiar and inoffensive scenario with the same weekly characters, most of whom have a fairly narrow range of characteristics that change very little over the course. Less Than Perfect is very much that, and by those terms it actually succeeds fairly well.
Claudia “Claude” Casey (Sara Rue) is a fish-out-of-water at fictional network GNB, where she works in the news department. While she is friendly, cheerful, and always looking to please the people around her, usually with a self-effacing joke or a plate of brownies, everyone else is on the career fast track, climbing the New York corporate ladder with all the vicious determination of a pack of hungry piranha and stepping on the backs of anyone who stands in their way. Due to a stroke of pure luck, Claude manages to move up from temp to working as the secretary of Will Butler (Eric Roberts), the network’s lead anchor. With the help of supportive stock minority friends Ramona (Sherri Shepherd) and Owen (Andy Dick), and despite the the schemes of social predators Kip (Zachary Levi) and Lydia (Andrea Parker), Claude is determined to make it at the network, and to do it on her own terms.
Like any sitcom that makes it to network, Less Than Perfect has a somewhat testy relationship with its own predictability. You know going into this show that nothing truly Earth-shattering is going to happen (there aren’t going to be any long, well-developed leprosy based storylines), but at the same time, when you’ve developed an attachment to a series, you’d be more than a little disappointed if your favorite characters didn’t say the exact thing that you imagined that they’d say. More often than not Perfect veers on the safe side of that equation, and doesn’t make a point of breaking from it. Dick and Shepherd can be amusing at times, but the show’s belaboring of how funny you’re supposed to find them becomes intrusive early on, and probably cuts off the opportunity for some really funny stuff by always going for the most obvious joke. By the time you’re a few episodes into this season, you very well might be able to predict not just scenes and events, but specific lines of dialogue, all of which are accompanied by the ever-present laugh track (which seems increasingly desperate as time goes on).
But the flip side of familiarity is comfort, and it should be noted that Perfect is not without its charming qualities. Nearly all of them can be chalked up to Rue as Claude, who manages to infuse her character with enough genuine warmth and perkiness that it’s easy to forget how another actress could have turned the part into a one-dimensional joke. Part of that has to do with Rue’s skill with a joke, but some of it also has to do with the fact that Rue is, by television standards, a big girl. This denies the show the obvious sex symbol that would perhaps have given it a wider audience, but does make its central character, and the way she looks at the world, far more convincing.
Apparently, the show gets a little bit sharper in later seasons, but even if it didn’t, it’d be hard to call it a failure. It manages to define itself within a matter of episodes, which is something that very few shows ever get to do, even if the terms are so very simple. You probably don't need to go out of your way to check out Less Than Perfect, but if you do come across it, it's unlikely that you'll resent it, or feel that it had broken any of its promises.
DVD Bonus Features
None.
"Less Than Perfect: The Complete First Season" is on sale September 7, 2010 and is not rated. Comedy. Directed by Ted Wass, Terry Hughes. Written by Terri Minsky, Christine Zander, J.J. Wall, Justin Adler, Tom Hertz, Cynthia Greenburg, Mike Dieffenbach, F.J. Pratt, Dan Cohen. Starring Eric Roberts, Sherri Shepherd, Zachary Levi, Sara Rue, Andy Dick, Andrea Parker.
