Episode Name:I'm Not That Guy
Air date:5/29/2013
Summary: Ben begins to develop romantic feelings for Riley, but his reputation for being an irresponsible playboy works against him. Elsewhere, Tucker attempts to date a model and Bonnie uses Emma to get close to an attractive stranger.
Ben becomes a surprise dad to a baby girl when she's left on his doorstep by an ex-girlfriend. Ben decides to raise the baby with the help of his mother, his brother Danny, his friend Tucker and Riley the girl who is harboring a secret crush on him.
An absolutely atrocious attempt by ABC to get a piece of the whole "young single parent sitcom" pie. Unfortunately for them, 'Raising Hope' remains the only show to get anything funny out of it.
However, I won't judge a show based on its premise. Lack of originality does not have to mean lack of quality, after all. But in order to write a good sitcom, you need some writing talent with a sense of humour and, well, writing. In 'Baby Daddy', none was involved.
There was not a single gag or line in the pilot episode that you couldn't smell coming a minute in advance. I could discern not a single original thought or punchline during the entire episode. Worst of all, the jokes that the writers copied from anywhere and everywhere were not even coherently combined into a narrative, or put in the context of the show. It was nothing but a parade of the most hackneyed, unfunny one-liners and clichés. Even the most bland comedy pilots usually manage to get at least one or two chuckles out of me—this show failed to do even that. It was especially cringe-worthy in that, while the clichés it uses are so old that not even lampshading them would be very funny anymore, the writers quite apparently decided to play them perfectly straight.
In the end, everything you need to know about the quality or originality of the show is already said by the promo images depicting its cast. Let's see: we've got Jack "Babyface" Everybody, a lead character that is so bland and uninteresting that he definitely won't bother anybody. We've got two pretty blondes that are allowed to pop by and smile. They even made it a plot point that the main guy clique of the show only even bothers with one of them because she is "hot" (when she didn't use to be, so yay for her). It's as insulting to women as it is to men. Then you've got the borderline developmentally challenged jock, as well as the token-foreigner and token-homosexual rolled into one. Oh my, whoever saw that coming!
I'm quite positive that I wouldn't have been able to come up with a more derivative, unoriginal premise and cast if I tried. This is the kind of show you and your friends make up while at a bar, when you try to make fun of stereotypical U.S. sitcoms; but turned into an actual production. So bad it's not even worth watching for trash value anymore, and I say that as a proud devotee of cult trash; there's a limit to everything.
I want to make it a point that I do not give out extreme ratings lightly, and that giving this show the lowest possible one represents my absolutely honest impression of this production. The funniest thing about it is that it was promoted as an "original comedy".
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