Outsourced

This past Thursday night was NBC's big Fall premiere night, with my favorite shows starting up again, 30 Rock, The Office and Community. Luckily, with the amazing cable hookup in my apartment, I get NBC, CBS and ABC from Denver, CO. Why are these some of my favorite comedies? It usually has to do with witty, original writing, a cast of diverse characters with a range of points of view (point of views?), avoiding obvious cliches and stereotypes, and the plot is usually secondary (I think I'm somewhat of a comedy snob/elitist of sorts!).

NBC premiered a brand new series this past week, Outsourced. It's about a guy from mid-west US who gets sent to India to run a call center (same plot as the movie from 2006). I was a bit skeptical about it, it could easily just make fun of Indians using cliche, unoriginal stereotypes. I watched it with an open mind and thought the writing and jokes were OK, nothing too original that I haven't heard/seen from ethnic based comedy. The scene where the manager first gets to India had a typical Indian street scene with a black and yellow rickshaw, but the background looked suspiciously and obviously green screened. There were jokes about: Indian food giving you diarrhea (fart jokes too), cows being holy to Hindus, Indian accents, weird Indian names, and apparently the character Manmeet didn't know the about the American concept of "dating" (this show is supposed to take place in Mumbai, not some small, traditional village). There were also some stereotypes about the US and Americans, lines like "In America, you can do whatever you want!" (talk about freedom etc etc) And for some reason, the time difference between the US and India was not addressed. During the work day in India they get calls from the US, but that would be mean its the middle of the night in the US?

The one character I thought was funny, the obvious odd ball of the bunch, was Gupta (Parvesh Cheena). It is cool to see that many South Asians on one TV show at prime time on a major US network though! Hopefully the show does well.

I'll keep watching it, maybe it will grow on me.