Love Monkey: Pilot
By: Mark Runyon | Category: Show Review | 01/18/06 | 11:31 PM
 |  |  Grade: B+ | Genre: Drama/Comedy
Summary: Love Monkey is a solid drama with the comedic bite we've come to expect from Cavanagh. While it's really too early in the game to be making sweeping predictions, I'm excited about the possibilities Love Monkey brings to the table. It is a sharp, funny dramedy that takes on the single man's quarter life crisis with wit and style.
The horses are officially out of the gate, and the offerings of the new television season have been busted up thoroughbreds at best. They are employing lots of formula, much aping of what has attracted advertising dollars in the past, and pretty much lacking any semblance of vision or heart. Granted asking the big 5 networks to be innovative is like asking Oprah to swear off chocolate cake. Everyone knows that cable networks are truly where it's at for savvy, cutting edge programming. Don't believe me? Look at Fox ditching its one great show, Arrested Development, because they don't know how to market it. All the while, Showtime sits in the wings, licking its chops, purged in wait to pounce on the quirky comedy. It's truly a pathetic state of affairs. It's tough to go into Love Monkey with anything other than a healthy touch of skepticism. Loosely based on Kyle Smith's novel, bearing the same name, Love Monkey stars Tom Cavanagh (Ed) as single guy Tom Farrell who has hit on a rancid streak of bad luck. Within the span of a day, he fumbles his job and loses the naked rights to his girlfriend. Now granted, he worked for a soul stealing, lecherous major record label, and his girlfriend was fruitier than one of Gwyneth Paltrow's children, but sometimes it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. Ah but I'm getting ahead of myself. |
 | | | Love Monkey | | Starring: Tom Cavanagh, Jason Priestley, Judy Greer, Ivana Milicevic, Catherine LaNasa, Larenz Tate, & Christopher Wiehl |
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Tom is man married to his music. He works as an A&R rep for Goliath records (read: huge, impersonal, bottom line, we could care less about the music corporation). For those not down with the music industry, an A&R guy is basically a musical strainer. He goes out to the smoky clubs to weed out the crap from the heinously crappy so we aren't forced to hear Ashlee Simpson's talentless ass piping through our radio. Hey, wait a minute! Tom is a man who puts the music and the artist's talent first. He believes that if you give people timeless music that inspires them, dressing their life, that the difficult equation of making money will magically drop into place. In a speech that would have made Jerry MaGuire green with envy, he takes a bold stand in the company meeting, pledging to spearhead the company in a new direction based on the foundation of talent over empty, "flavor of the moment" chart toppers. His boss (Eric Bogosian) has dollar signs for eyes so Tom's is as good as canned before he can tack the last period on his final thought.
Tom's got three great guy friends -- two single, one married to his sister. They all squabble over the evils of marriage, finding and keeping the right woman, and if the right woman is actually as mythical a creature as Loch Ness. This lot is as thick as thieves. Tom's girlfriend is a total life sucker, and all his buds see this train wreck rumbling down the tracks. Even Tom kind of sees it, but he's got blinders on called comfort and free sex. The one thing he has in common with her, music, their tastes clash like brothers dueling over the last brownie. How this one didn't get weeded out on date one is beyond me. She pulls the clever bait and switch on him; saying in the early courting phase that she didn't believe in marriage then complains that he's never going to ask her to marry her. Women, logic, yeah we're not going there. She cuts him loose like he should have done long ago, and the first thing he does as a newly minted single man is to go up to a foxy red head and drown her in his sob story. She gives him digits -- to a therapist.
As he's hopelessly floundering after the rug of life yanked out from under him, he leans on his friends who offer to aid his quest in starting his own record label. Sure he's got no money, no distributor, no marketing savvy, but a man's got to have a dream as Terrence Howard would say in Hustle & Flow. His girl pal, Bran (Judy Greer), helps him make sense of the drive-by whacking he took, and attempts to glue the shattered pieces back together. As his first effort as a new man, he decides to go after the golden boy, Wayne (Teddy Geiger), who seems to be stealing John Mayer's early style. Tom wins over Wayne with his undying devotion to the gods of music, but ultimately Tom tells Wayne to sign with Goliath, realizing that Wayne is ready to orbit the moon and Tom's new label doesn't even have a launching pad yet. His favorable musical karma rewards Tom as a friend, who runs an indie label who just happened to beat out Goliath for Wayne's musical affections, picks him up. Tom's decision to wade back into the 9-5 wasn't hurt by the smoking hot Ivana Milicevic slapin' him with a copy of the Essential Bob Dylan. This firecracker has definitely got the goods to compete for a spot among the ten sexiest women in television. My eyes will definitely not object to feasting on her each week.
Love Monkey is a solid drama with the comedic bite we've come to expect from Cavanagh. If you married High Fidelity with Jerry MaGuire, Love Monkey might be their illegitimate stepchild. This drama seems to be the bookend to the new Heather Graham comedy Emily's Reasons Why Not. A Sex and the City for the guys if you will, keeping to the strong appeal of Smith's novel. Tom Cavanagh is a great actor that can easily make any series fun and enticing, and he is backed by a very able cast including Mr. 90210 himself, Jason Priestley. I do have to point out that the producers aren't posers when it comes to music. The pilot featured 24 songs including choice cuts from the Killers, Madeleine Peyroux, Talking Heads, Franz Ferdinand and Badly Drawn Boy. While it's really too early in the game to be making sweeping predictions, I'm excited about the possibilities Love Monkey brings to the table. It is a sharp, funny dramedy that takes on the single man's quarter life crisis with wit and style.
Catch Love Monkey Tuesday nights at 10 PM ET/PT on CBS
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