Steve Carell is appealingly awkward in Rooster, and the cast give him good company. But familiar jokes and an underwritten father-daughter relationship make this campus comedy difficult to recommend beyond its leading man.
Rooster wants us to enjoy watching a flawed father make another attempt at getting his life right. There is plenty of room for a comedy in that, particularly with Steve Carell playing Greg Russo and a college campus offering people who might notice his mistakes. But this is a mixed, rather undemanding series whose performers are more interesting than the problems written for them. The awkward encounters work often enough; the broader story gives us fewer reasons to care.
Carell understands how to make a socially uncomfortable man tolerable for longer than a single joke. His Greg has the familiar earnestness that makes an ill-judged attempt to connect seem forgivable, without making the attempt any less embarrassing. We warmed to Greg during his awkward exchanges with Katie: Carell makes the father’s affection apparent through the discomfort. He makes the wish to get things right believable, even when the writing has not given that wish much detail.
Charly Clive’s Katie matters to that response: this cannot work simply as a vehicle for Carell to be endearing. Their father-daughter rapport gives the series something to return to when the other stories wander, though affection alone does not make Katie a fully explored character. Danielle Deadwyler, Phil Dunster and John C. McGinley add to the appeal of the ensemble. The cast are good at making encounters enjoyable before we have much reason to be interested in the people having them.
Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses are among the writers, and the recurring difficulty is deciding how much weight these personal troubles should carry. The stories wander before the characters acquire enough individual wants or worries to make that wandering worthwhile. Blake McClure handles cinematography and Ali Greer editing, but there is only so much a production can do when another familiar joke takes the place of a discovery about somebody. The breezy pace makes the programme easy company. It also makes it easy to overlook how little the relationships have developed.
As a campus comedy, it settles for less than the setting offers. A college brings together people who have opinions about how everyone else should live, which ought to give this sort of story a plentiful supply of friction. Rooster tends to keep the cultural disagreements superficial and the comedy comfortable. We do not need a lecture, but a few jokes that risk making somebody uncomfortable would help the place feel inhabited by people with convictions.
Carell admirers have a reason to try an episode, and the ensemble provides some compensation for the familiar material. Anyone hoping the college setting will produce a sharper comedy should be more cautious. The tenderness between Greg and Katie makes the thin writing frustrating, because their relationship deserves more attention than it gets. Stay only if spending time with the cast is enough for an evening.
