Factory
Directors: Mitch Rouse, John Peters
Starring:David Pasquesi, Michael Coleman, Jay Leggett, Mitch Rouse
Premieres: Sunday, June 29 at 10 pm on Spike
As Spike’s first original comedy, Factory automatically stands out purely due to the fact that it isn’t a CSI rerun or Ultimate Fighting. A largely improvised sitcom, Factory follows four guys who work in, well, a factory. They drink a lot of beer, complain about their respective woman problems and try to figure out new and inventive ways to avoid actually getting anything done.
The series opens with a freak accident in that factory that leads to McKenzie, the gang’s supervisor, getting mangled to death by some machinery. The big boss, for reasons unknown, decides that one of the guys, Gary, Smitty, Chase or Gus, will be McKenzie’s replacement and leaves it up to them to decide who it will be.
The comedy that comes out of McKenzie’s funeral, meeting Gary and Smitty’s wives and the inept scheming to get the supervisor position is hit or miss. Gary’s entire scene with McKenzie’s son Don, is hilarious: they compare 10 seconds of “real time” to 10 seconds of “death time” (the amount of time McKenzie was alive as he was being mangled) and come to the conclusion that “death time” seems way longer. Smitty’s inappropriate feelings for the young girl staying with him and his estranged wife come off as more creepy than funny, but the scenes in which he tries to get back together with his wife work much better.
Factory isn’t the type of show that completely wows you right out of the gate. The pacing and delivery inherent in its improvisational style takes some getting used to, as does the production value of the pilot. The first time I watched it, it seemed oddly cobbled together, which as I found out, is due to the fact that 25% of the pilot comes directly from the demo that creator Mitch Rouse showed to Spike TV a year and a half ago.
With that said, Factory does grow on you. I appreciated the episode much more on the second viewing and feel like once Factory hits its stride, it has the potential to be a really solid show. As it stands, they’ve got six episodes that are going to begin airing on June 29th. This is the perfect time for them to launch, since it’s summer and there isn’t a whole lot of non-reality competition out there. I would definitely recommend checking it out and seeing where Factory goes.
Check out a preview of Factory below:
