Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
When Bobby Moynihan left Saturday Night Live, it wasn’t because he was sick of playing Drunk Uncle. He had a good reason: Me, Myself & I, a CBS single-camera comedy about the critical choices an average guy makes at three points in his life: when he’s 14 in 1991, when he’s 40 in 2017, and when he’s 65 in 2042. It’s like three sitcoms in one, sort of like Life in Pieces, but with time travel.
A Guide to Our Rating System
Opening Shot: The opening of a pilot can set a mood for the entire show (think Six Feet Under); thus, we examine the first shot of each pilot.
The Gist: The “who, what, where, when, why?” of the pilot.
Our Take: What did we think? Are we desperate for more or desperate to get that hour back?
Sex and Skin: That’s all you care about anyway, right? We let you know how quickly the show gets down and dirty.
Parting Shot: Where does the pilot leave us? Hanging off a cliff, or running for the hills?
Sleeper Star: Basically, someone in the Me, Myself & I cast who is not the top-billed star who shows great promise.
Most Pilot-y Line: Pilots have a lot of work to do: world building, character establishing, and stakes raising. Sometimes that results in some pretty clunky dialogue.
Our Call: We’ll let you know if you should, ahem, Stream It or Skip It.
ME, MYSELF AND I
Opening Shot: A close-up of 40-year-old Alex Riley (Moynihan) introducing himself, and saying “this is the story of my life.” But he also says “to get the complete picture, I should start with…”, then morphs into the 14-year-old version of himself (Jack Dylan Grazer), who says “the day that changed everything.” We’ll also eventually see the 65-year old version of Alex (John Larroquette), just not right at the start.
The Gist: Alex Riley has been an inventor his whole life. At 40, he currently has a semi-successful company that produces and markets his inventions, but in the months after he caught his wife Sarah (Allison Tolman) schtupping an ambulance driver, his creative mojo has been in the toilet. It doesn’t help that he’s living in the garage of his best friend and CFO, Darryl (Jaleel White… yes, you read that name correctly). He also has to figure out how to be a single dad to his daughter Abby (Skylar Grey).
Teenage Alex has moved with his mother (Mandell Maughan) from Chicago — he’s the biggest Michael Jordan fan on the planet — to Los Angeles after she gets married to her boyfriend Ron (Brian Unger). His stepbrother Justin (Christopher Paul Richards) tries to get him through the first days of school without being labeled anything bad, and he almost makes it after Alex catches the eye of Nori Sterling (Reylynn Caster), the most popular girl in the class.
The 65-year-old Alex, whose company is a multinational juggernaut, suffers a heart attack at the New York Stock Exchange and chooses to retire. Problem is: he has no idea what he wants to do with the rest of his life. Things get off to a good start, however, after he meets the new owner of his favorite diner: a woman named Elanor (Sharon Lawrence), who used to go by the name Nori when she was a kid.
Our Take: We were expecting the back-and-forth between 2017, 1991 and 2042 to be disconcerting, but creator Dan Kopelman and his writing staff did a good job of making the story flow as we jumped back and forth between time periods. We hope that every week, that’s what we’ll see, a story that’s a through-line that connects each time period, with connections made and subtle in-jokes thrown in, that’ll make the storytelling feel cohesive. It feels like it could be a big ask, but This Is Us proved it can be done. Me, Myself & I‘s pilot shows it’s off to a good start.
The casting helps. Moynihan does a great job of projecting an everyman persona that still has the curiosity he had when he was 14, and Grazer does a good job of playing a kid who is intelligent beyond his years. And a shelffull of Emmys has proven that Larroquette can do physical comedy and emotionally heavy scenes in his sleep. That kind of range will be necessary here, since we’re exploring the critical periods of Alex’s life; it won’t just all be pratfalls and goofiness. The humor might be subtle at times, and all three actors can pull it off.
White is also excellent as Darryl, Alex’s realistic but encouraging best friend. It’s fun to see him return to series TV for the first time since Family Matters, and he shows the talent that made him a star on that show almost three decades ago. And though we get only a glimpse of the folks in Future Alex’s life, including his basketball coach daughter Abby (Kelen Coleman), the casting of Lawrence shows the promise that storyline holds.
Sex and Skin: That part where Alex’s wife is schtupping the ambulance driver? That happens two minutes in, but the schtupping is shown off-camera. Young Alex also manages to share a Life Saver with Young Nori, but that scene is more gross than anything else.
Parting Shot: Over the strains of “Do You Realize??” by The Flaming Lips, Alex opens his garage door and sees Abby with her suitcase; she’s moving in with him until they can get on their feet. Awww.
Sleeper Star: Unger’s character looks like he’ll just be a douchetastic stepdad who spouts basketball metaphors, but it turns out that he’s a huge influence in Alex’s life, as we see in more than one timeline.
Most Pilot-y Line: More like a music choice. When Young Alex spies Nori for the first time, she’s walking in slo-mo while “There She Goes” by The La’s plays in the background. Yes, it takes place in 1991, but the choice feels a little on the nose — and a bit overused — to us.
Our Call: Stream It. Me, Myself & I was one of the best network pilots of the fall season; funny, well-acted, well-written, and sets up what we’re going to find out about Alex’s life without hitting us over the head with clunky exposition. Few pilots hit the ground running like this one does; let’s hope it keeps things going.
(Click to see all of Decider’s complete Stream It or Skip It reviews)
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.
