This past week saw a new comedy added to the ABC lineup, entitled “Mixology.” The show’s season is set to span one night in a bar as all sorts of mishaps occur, each episode focusing on different relationships between two out of the 10 characters. Though the premise does not seem to be very complex, the show is funny enough to hold its own in the 9:30/8:30c time slot for a while.
The first two episodes, “Tom & Maya” and “Liv & Ron,” respectively, introduce the 10 characters the first season will revolve around. Narrated by Tom’s best friend, Bruce (Andrew Santino, “Henry Poole is Here”), the first episode follows Tom (Blake Lee, “Parks and Recreation”) who was recently dumped by his fiancée. Sure, “Mixology” relies on the overused trope of a nice guy who does not understand the dating scene, but with Maya (Ginger Gonzaga, “The Morning After”) as a foil to his inadequacies, the show is held together. The narrator presents Maya as cold-hearted and selfish, but she is actually just someone who knows what she wants. Obviously Maya is not someone to let a person waste her time, as Tom promises to. He awkwardly approaches her to buy a drink, quickly breaking into tears after seconds of talking to a woman. Maya, who did not sign up to be a babysitter for the night, quickly provides concise and sharp-witted advice to snap him out of it. Hilarity ensues after he manages to get her number and creepily tries to add her on Facebook, before his friends Bruce and Cal (Craig Frank, “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries) intervene.
“Liv and Ron,” the following episode, focuses on the two eponymous characters. Liv (Kate Simses, “What’s Your Number?”) is Maya’s friend, who has not done a daring thing in her entire life—except for, it appears, on this infamous night. She very ill-advisedly chooses to have a drink with the good-looking and British Ron (Adam Campbell, “Epic Movie”), despite the fact that she has a fiancé waiting for her at home. Ron, on the other hand, introduces himself to the audience by puking into the handbag of his blind date—who promptly sends him away. Both the first and second episodes provide analeptic scenes away from the bar, detailing the past of certain characters and preventing a monotonous location.
This show looks like it is going to provide a lot of comedy through raunchy and insulting jokes, especially since it was created by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, both writers for “The Hangover.” Such jokes would not necessarily be a bad thing, as long as they were interspersed with other forms of humor which, sadly, do not look to be the future of “Mixology.” While it is obviously not going to be a show to hold a fan base comparable to that of “How I Met Your Mother” and its nine seasons, the new show will provide enough laughs to keep it going through at least one. Where “Mixology” goes next will be up in the air, as any more episodes portraying a single night will become dull and monotonous, just like each of the characters’ acting.
In a show centered entirely on showing the worst of the human condition, “Mixology”-like situations will hopefully not plague any of the college bar-goers around campus. While many people may find the jokes funny, the show is guaranteed to get old, just as the second and third “Hangover” did. The entire premise of “Mixology” seems to be an overused sitcom setting, just another bullet point on the list signaling the declining innovation of the entertainment industry. The show is a perfect example of bad mixology—too much vodka and not enough cranberry.
