Dear Fox Network,
We’re writing about your new series, The Return of Jezebel James, premiering at mid-season. We were fairly excited about this series for a number of reasons. First of all, it stars Parker Posey and Lauren Ambrose, both of whom we like quite a bit. Second of all, it comes from Amy Sherman-Palladino, the clever creator of Gilmore Girls. With cred like that, how could such a series go wrong?
Then we watched the trailer for the show that someone has posted to YouTube, and we almost immediately wanted to kill ourselves. Or, more accurately, you, Fox Network. The show itself seems halfway decent, we guess. True, its premise, that an infertile career woman needs her less-successful sister to carry her baby, seems a tiny bit insulting, not to mention trite. However, it’s got some good lines, snappily delivered by Posey and Ambrose.
That’s why it’s such a shame that those lines are obscured by a laugh track. Yes, seriously, a laughably fake-sounding, inappropriately timed laugh track. It sounds so horribly artificial that it makes us think it was edited in by YouTube user SeaKoPT just as a joke. But other users have submitted Jezebel James scenes featuring the same horrible fake laughter.
Please, Fox Network, can the canned laughter. It makes the show seem horrible. And it will definitely make us not watch it should the laugh track make it all the way to air.
Your friend,
Vulture
