are you there chelseaChelsea Handler's new show, Are You There, Chelsea? airs tonight on NBC and it's sad to say, but I'm not willing to give this show a chance. And I even consider myself a fan of hers. I love her books, her TV show Chelsea Lately is one I never miss, and her stand-up specials are a thing of beauty. However, I've learned my lesson and I'm not going to try and force myself to suffer through 22 minutes of a three-camera comedy with a laugh track. I tried with that show Whitney, which stars Whitney Cummings, a hilarious panelist on Chelsea's late night talk show, and I was more than just disappointed, I was flabbergasted.

How is it that both Chelsea and Whitney, two of the funniest women I've ever seen, suck so bad when it comes to sitcoms?

Granted, it's way harder to write a TV show than it is bits about celebrities and pop culture for a talk show, but I'm assuming these women wouldn't have put this product out there unless they were proud of their work and what they produced. Which then begs the question, do they think their shows are funny?

Because it seems like these sitcoms would be exactly the kind of thing they'd each rip into if given the chance. The shallow characters, the paragraph it takes to spit out a one-liner, the blatant stereotypes, and the invasive laugh-track that blares throughout the whole show, essentially shouting LAUGH AT THIS, LAUGH AT THIS!! after every other word is uttered ... it would be so easy for them to make fun of.

Chelsea's new show might have legs, but I really have no interest in giving it an opportunity to stand. And the fact that Chelsea is wearing that god awful brown wig to play her own older sister since actress Laura Prepon plays Chelsea is almost as distracting as Prepon's swallowed words ... I have no idea what she's saying half the time.

I blew my wad with the Chelsea Lately-crew-turned-sitcom-stars by giving Whitney a shot and now I've got nothing left to give. The Godmother Chelsea has gone and gotten her own show and I don't even have the patience to set my DVR.

I still love Whitney and Chelsea, but I'll look for them elsewhere. Their sitcoms don't do their humor or their personalities any justice.

Will you watch Are You There, Chelsea?

 

Photo via nbc.com