Just two years ago, a year before his death, Robin Williams made a sort of comeback to television with the show The Crazy Ones. Alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar and a few new faces to comedy who add their own spunk to the show, and work well with the skillful Williams without stepping over each other’s toes.
The show follows a very simple story about a father (Williams) and daughter (Gellar) who run an advertising firm together, about the different shenanigans that come with the work. I didn’t get a chance to watch it on cable consistently but I stumbled upon a scene or two while flipping channels and laughed out loud at the riffs that Williams performed and smiled at the chemistry between Gellar and Williams. However, it didn’t keep me hooked long enough to change the channel.
Now that Netflix has launched it and made binge watching the twenty-two episodes easy, it was a real hoot to follow.
Williams of course is superb. His jokes, impressions, and mannerisms never fail to cause a laugh. His character Simon, a rehabilitated father working with his daughter as the head of the ad agency, is perfect for his type of comedy. Each episode requires a different quirky story, which requires a different Williams’s attribute. We even get to hear some old impressions that will make anyone who watched his older movies smile from nostalgia.
Since the overall story was very lighthearted and doesn’t follow a stable underlining story, besides quirky work shenanigans, the show didn’t do well on cable. There was no depth to the show that made the audience want to keep coming back. No episode really stood out from the pack because this was the type of show that worked well as a whole, not individually. You could easily watch the season out of order and understand the dynamic between each character, and still gain the same amount of laughter. The entire first season seemed almost like one big pilot, as if CBS was testing the waters before they aired a second season, which could have had more complexity, but we’ll never know.
Yes, Williams is brilliant at comedy and he flowed well with Gellar in their fictional father-daughter relationship but without depth to a show or even the characters lives, it becomes just a simple comedy that’s lovely to watch or listen to while you’re doing the dishes. Which is why it’s great that Netflix has added The Crazy Ones because even though it was not a success, only airing one season, it’s still a nice show to binge watch on a Sunday afternoon to give you a laugh before the week ahead of you.
Even just for the sake of remembering Williams and experiencing his raw talent, this show is great to watch, especially in the last five minutes of each episode that included outtakes from that episode. Arguably the best part of each episode, which mainly consisted of Williams’ improved riffs. You can hear the purity in the laughter that Williams so naturally receives after his jokes, and it’ll just warm your heart watching Williams do what he so loved to do.
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