Outsourced's Ben Rappaport Will Star In ABC Comedy Pilot Awesometown

Thanks to The Big Bang Theory, 2 Broke Girls, and New Girl, comedies featuring twentysomethings are kind of trendy right now. Which doesn’t necessarily mean I am rooting for another twentysomethings comedy to attempt to catch my attention, especially not one that sounds remarkably like New Girl with a male protagonist. Bleh.

In development at ABC is a pilot titled Awesometown about a dude in his twenties who gets married to a chick he has dated since middle school, who he then finds out is cheating on him. Of course, as a newly homeless individual, the young man then finds a place to stay in an apartment shared by two of his buddies (played by Nick Kocher and James Earl III). While the marriage theme is new, we have definitely seen the rest in the past year from Zooey Deschanel and co. Which would not matter quite as much if the show had a killer title and a killer cast. Meh.

According to Deadline, Ben Rappaport has been tapped to play the lead in Awesometown as the jilted lover, Dusty. If you’ve seen Rappaport before, it was probably on NBC’s short-lived corporate comedy Outsourced, where he channeled Josh Hamilton to a tee (Hamilton played the same character in the film the series is based on). I know Rappaport has the chops to play a lead, but Outsourced was really horrible, and I don’t have high hopes for Awesometown. Maybe if producers give the show a less foolish title it will suddenly seem more charming, but unless the writing is stellar, the appeal of this project seems inaccessible.