2012 shows minireviewed: Suit Up

You made a mistake, Linus. You made me care about this.

I can’t believe I’d missed this, but DirecTV and Fox has made a comedy-drama webseries (though it looks slick enough that nobody would blink to see it on their TVs) starring Marc Evan Jackson (Sparks Nevada on the beyond excellent The Thrilling Adventure Hour, unflappable attorney in Parks & Recreation and elitist professor and Beowulf-expert on Brooklyn Nine-Nine), and it’s really quite good. Two seasons so far (fingers crossed that there’ll be a third, but webseries production isn’t exactly the type of stuff that’s easy to find online updates about), which sees Jackson’s crisis managing lawyer be recruited by a university college to head up its sports department (which via its football and basketball teams finances the entire school). He, of course, knows nothing about sports, but everything about perception, and hilarity (with a bit of side dish manipulative awesomeness) ensues as he runs around expertly putting out fires while daily encountering (and sometimes unintentionally setting) new ones.

The show mainly works due to Jackson’s ability to blend dry wit with hilariously real annoyance and disappointment, much like the show blends realistic drama and over-the-top ridiculousness. The sports aspect did concern me, as I’m about as interested in sports as I am in … I actually cannot think of anything I’m less interested in than sports. But as it turns out, no need to worry. The sports is as incidental here as paper was in The Office or coffee was in Friends. Just because it is in every episode and functions as the excuse for bringing the characters together doesn’t mean it is actually important in any way.

If you like Jackson (and why wouldn’t you), there’s no reason to not check this out. It’s perhaps unlikely to be the best comedy you’ll see this year, but it’s a thoroughly good one, with an engaging, fast-moving plot that doesn’t give you time to ever feel bored, and just enough drama flavour to make you care about what’s going on. The episodes are short, averaging at about 9-12 minutes each, with the two seasons thus far made totalling a quickly covered 16 episodes total. So go see, the whole thing is freely available on YouTube, and then tell me what you thought in the comments.