The Loop: Season One

I'm not sure who the audience is for this schizophrenic would-be comedy: slackers who wish they were corporate VPs, or corporate VPs who wish they were slackers. Either way, the contrived shenanigans of Sam Sullivan (Bret Harrison)—twentysomething corporate VP by day, slacker by night—are hollow and laughless. Yes, Sam will go out drinking tequila all night with his pals even though he has be in his window office first thing in the morning, but he will also abandon a friend whose trust in him is already fragile in order to save his corporate ass. Sam swings wildly from being a jerk who puts his job above his friends to being an overgrown child who couldn't possibly have finished junior high school. The one-note supporting characters are as dull as, well, Sam himself: the overqualified executive assistant who does nothing but complain about how overqualified she is; the dopey brother with his get-rich-quick schemes; the object of Sam's unrequited love who's hot and...not much else. These seven 2006 episodes of the Fox-aired The Loop sketch out a very unattractive portrait of the trailing end of Generation X as a bunch of shallow, unpleasant nitwits (no matter their advanced degrees) who are constitutionally incapable of achieving happiness. DVD extras include a “Thesis: Work vs. Play” featurette. Not a necessary purchase. (M. Johanson)