Manhattan Love Story is the type of show I should fall head-over-heels for. Afterall I adore Manhattan and love stories are why I watched nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother. Unfortunately the show took all of my good will and threw it into the East River.
Dana and Peter (whose names I had to look up to write this because I was so uninterested in them) meet on a blind date arranged by their respective friends and sets this supposed love story in motion. As any good love story — or at least one in movies or television — their first date doesn’t go so well. Part of the problem is Dana’s quirkiness compounded with an awful first day at a new job and the other part is that Peter doesn’t really want to be there to begin with. Over the course of their short dinner we learn about each characters intrinsically different views on life and The Big Apple that proves that opposites (eventually) attract.
These is a great example of why pilots are strange beasts. In order to sell a show to a network and an audience, a show needs to have a hook. However, that hook becomes less and less important as a show goes on. With that in mind, this game of cat and mouse obviously can’t sustain itself for multiple seasons. That’s where the supporting cast and their likeability comes into play. Going back to HIMYM, what made seasons 6-8 (nothing could save season 9) watchable was our investment in the character’s daily lives even though there was no hope of meeting the elusive mother anytime soon. On that front Manhattan Love Story is screwed.
To start, aside from being handsome (I suppose), Peter is pretty much a jerk — like an unfunny Barney Stinson. Dana, on the other hand, is cute enough but there was nothing that really stands out about her that makes her worth following. The rest of the ensemble does nothing but make the show even harder to watch and none of them have any memorable moments to speak of.
We’ve made it this far without even mentioning the show’s “unique” element — we can hear what is really going on in Dana’s and Peter’s heads. While the trailer made it seem that this gimmick was going to be prevalent throughout ala What Women Want it really only appears in a couple of scenes and doesn’t really do much in the ways of making the show interesting. I’ve always been a big defender of voice-over in the face of people who say it’s lazy writing. While shows like Scrubs use it to great and creative effect, Manhattan just gives ammo to my opponents’ argument.
The creator of the series was recently quoted as saying that the love story would be a “slow slow burn.” If that’s the case, I predict that that handful of viewers Manhattan Love Story has left by the time its cancellation rolls around will never get to see what becomes of Dana and Peter and it remains to be seen if even they’ll care at that point.
This pilot is almost as if they watched the recent Paul Rudd/Amy Poehler/David Wain film They Came Together and decided to use all the same cliches that film mocks but take them seriously (“it’s almost like New York is another character!”). Even though it’s free to watch Manhattan Love Story on ABC, I’d recommend spending money to rent that film instead… Or just don’t watch the show.