Too easy. It's too easy to say: "The Good Guys...isn't," uh, good. So I won't. But it isn't - not really. Maybe if you only had a choice between "Murder She Wrote" reruns or this you'd be excused for sitting through this odd (not in a good way) and uneven one hour comedy.

The premise - is there one? Two mismatched cops who do small-time property crime investigations (that always lead to real big cases) are partners.

Colin Hanks and Bradley Whitford play the mismatched partners - you can tell they don't belong together as a team because:

 1) One is old, one is young.
 2) One wears suits, the other wears...not suits.
 3) One is technologically adept, the other isn't.
 4) One is strange and wild and the other isn't.
 5) One is stuck in the 80's and...

...well, you get it, right?

Pay no attention to the stories - that's not the purpose. The entertainment value is in watching long-suffering Hanks deal with drunk?/high?/brain damaged?/serial oddball? Whitford as he mugs for the camera and comes on like an icky man-pig to every woman they encounter. Ah, and he calls things funny names like "computer machine" for laptop and talks to it like he's just done a tab of acid.

Oh, stop I hear you saying...my sides are splitting with unbridled glee already.

The pilot was written by creator Matt Nix ("Burn Notice") and directed by Tim Matheson and it wasn't bad. Unfortunately there was an episode 2.

The problem, in general, is that the humor most times isn't funny and it's so broad and goofy that you think "Smoky and The Bandit" is experiencing a reprise as a series. Only Whitford isn't Dom Deluise and Hanks isn't Burt Reynolds (although I think Whitford is actually doing a DeLuise/Reynolds thing all by himself); and, get a clue producers, this isn't really the 80's when that sort of thing might have gone over. 

Unlike "Psyche" and "Monk" that straddle the comedic fence, "The Good Guys" isn't able to do so comfortably. Nix, a capable writer, made it work in the pilot - mostly - but it was totally lost in ep2.

The curse of the one hour series premier is that sometimes you need two. See the opening ep for "V" as a blaring example of how not to do a 1hr pilot.  This one perhaps could have won me over had I seen more information about how/why this team came to be. I mean if you're going to try to capture the 80's (a real and horrible trend it seems these days) then do the "Lethal Weapon" thing and show us how the mismatched pair came to be from the start. A true origin episode. Instead, we're dumped into a Dallas police station and asked to accept these two with little or no information about them or their partnership. I know, I know - we'll fill it in as we go along. That is, if anyone sticks around long enough for that to happen.  NOTE: they have this really annoying gunshot s/fx between acts. Who do I gotta pay off to stop that?

The 1hr pilot played on the Colin Hanks' character's anger and irritation at being teamed with a burned out has-been. Much more of that would have served ep2 well but Hanks' character already seems to be accepting this pair-up from hell by ep2.  As mentioned, perhaps if there had been a 2hr premier and Nix had written it this would have created a better flow into the subsequent eps.

I am actually a big fan of Colin Hanks and Bradley Whitford but this is a long way from Whitford's roles in "West Wing" and "Studio 60," and Hanks'  promising "Orange County" start.
I may give this show one more episode but I am honestly not that motivated. Perhaps if I'm sitting in front of the Tivo when it's promoed and I can find it easily enough I'll stick a record tag on it and let it sit in my queue until I'm finished with all my "Murder She Wrote" episodes. Maybe.

Just to be complete about this, I watched ep2 first and the pilot online. I am not sure when the pilot aired but I think it was weeks ago - if at all. I was certain I had the first ep recorded until I realized that there was just too much they weren't explaining and I went back and found the pilot. Not sure how this came about but there it is. 

I'm also not sure what this means but in looking over the IMDB listing, Colin Hanks is listed on only seven eps where Whitford (one of the producers, by the way) is listed as being in eight.  Does this mean that Hanks bailed?  Do you care?

"The Good Guys" airs on Fox (our most schizophrenic network.)

Good luck in determining when.