Pretty Smart (series): A pathetic attempt at repackaging "Big Bang Theory"

It has been a while since I have seen a series that was just absolutely terrible and when this popped up on my Netflix Home area it was more of a sense of morbid curiosity than actual desire that made me watch it. I wasn't expecting it to be good but at the same time the level of horrible that it manages makes it one of the worst things I have suffered through in quite some time. I took the time to watch 4 episodes and didn't so much as smile, let alone laugh.

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Ok, so you remember how in The Big Bang Theory that a group of hyper-intelligent but not very social-adept people live in a building but then someone who is not very smart but is also hot and socially active moves into the building and really shakes up their lives? Well Pretty Smart did exactly the opposite.

An extremely intelligent girl moves to California and ends up living in the same house as her sister and her roommates, all of which are attractive idiots. Instead of Sheldon, Raj, Leonard, and Howard talking about things that Penny can't understand we have Chelsea - who constantly uses phrases and words that befuddles her not-interested-in-being intelligent roommates.

To suggest that this doesn't work at all is an understatement. It is also something that kind of made me angry because it is so obvious that they are trying to copy Big Bang without directly copying it.

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_{She's so smart that she doesn't even have an Instagram account and instead reads New Yorker Magazine??? oh that's hilarious! hahahahahaha}

The fact that this is a traditional sitcom with computerized laughter doesn't help things either because you have to be told when something is meant to be funny and therein lies the next problem: Smart person confusing dumb attractive people with big words has been done so much already in Big Bang that it isn't funny anymore.

The improbability of a group of people who don't do anything meaningful for work being able to afford an enormous house on the California coast is just icing on the cake for me as far as how unrealistic this is. At least with Big Bang everyone lived in reasonable accommodation. I might be splitting hairs here. We don't need to get into realism to explain just how horrible this show is.

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The "Leonard and Penny" relationship potential is established literally in the first 2 minutes of the series and it is telegraphed in such a way that anyone who has seen Big Bang, which is probably everyone, will be rolling their eyes until they can see the back of their skulls.

I think one thing that really holds this series back as well is the fact that they are being very careful to not have any jokes that might offend any particular group out there. The gay guy that lives in the house does gay things that probably could be funny if we were allowed to laugh at that anymore, but they don't touch this aspect of it probably out of fear of the cancel culture mob. Don't worry guys, you'll be cancelled alright, but not because of demographically insensitive jokes. You'll be cancelled because the show is just awful.

Should I watch it?

If you want to actively pursue diminishing your own IQ while also encouraging the downfall of society as a whole I would say yeah! Go for it! Otherwise I would be surprised if most people can make it all the way through just one episode. I suffered through the first 3 in the hopes that it would get better after the character establishment, then skipped to the last one and painstakingly finished that as well. It did not get better. I don't know if this has been greenlit for a season 2 but I can't imagine any particularly good reason why that would be the case. Netflix will spend money on anything I guess and their promotion of this absolutely awful series is kind of proof of that. Watch at your own peril.