First Impressions: The Goodwin Games ‘Pilot’ – I Love You Anyways

The biggest problem with sitcom pilots is their need to feel special. Every pilot’s got to have some unnecessary audience-grabbing hook, something that shows us how ‘unique’ their special situation is. For co-creators Carter Bays and Chris Thomas, this gimmick worked magic for them with How I Met Your Mother – and with the help of Chris Harris, they’re trying it again with The Goodwin Games, a pilot that has enough potential, but can’t get out of the way of its own premise, pushing away from its most powerful moments to engage its broader tendencies and silly overarching “game” narrative.

There are a few moments that The Goodwin Games really nails – most of them involving their father (Beau Bridges), who recorded a series of videos to guide his estranged children through a game to win his $23 million inheritance. And there’s a moment at the end when Chloe (Becki Newton) – the smart daughter who threw her promise away for a failed acting career – finds a Scrabble board with a letter from their father apologizing for his shortcomings. For a brief moment, the hokey “gaming” premise finds its footing, revealed as a way for a father to reunite the children he allowed to grow apart through everyone’s mutual selfishness (except the youngest brother Jimmy (TJ Miller), who is released from prison at the beginning of the pilot).

Unfortunately, there’s too much of the actual Goodwin Games permeating the events of the pilot for it to function as an effective emotional tool. There’s numbered videos, a lawyer who knows all the rules (and was Chloe’s best friend, until she “got popular”), and the promise of more gimmicky games with the “adventure only beginning” when the three find their way into a photo booth at the end of the pilot (don’t forget the monks walking around handing out instructions). Without being particularly funny – save for a few choice lines from Jim – there isn’t a lot for audiences to engage with, except for a few poor attempts at softening the selfish protagonists like Jimmy’s love for his daughter, or Henry’s (Scott Foley) obvious state of shock over his father’s death.

It’s not a show without promise – the few emotional moments that connect in the final act show an ability to at least find satisfying (if unoriginal) conclusions. But it leans too heavily on the gimmick of the father’s videos to his children (like his ability to predict every action and question of his kids, despite the temporal distance) and the games to be played to spend time emotionally investing in characters. With an episode order cut in half – from 13 to 7, due to “scheduling issues” – the future already isn’t that bright for The Goodwin Games, and a few solid emotional beats in an otherwise laughless 22-minute episode isn’t exactly promising.

Grade: C

Other thoughts/observations:

– what really bugs me is how the father encourages his kids to compete and hate each other their entire lives, hiding it under the guise of “it’s fun” and that it brings them together. Having three kids compete for something they all want (and only giving it to one, who was always Chloe) is not a way to be a successful and/or likable father figure.

– one sitcom pilot that didn’t try to be “special”, or ride a big attention-grabber in its pilot: Cheers ‘Give Me a Ring Sometime’. The pilot is a character piece – which I find even more daring than a pilot with a unique and/or controversial gimmick.

– Scott Foley’s character is a doctor who broke up with his girlfriend Lucinda after she entered the ministry. She shows up for a little will they,won’t they,despite Henry being engaged to Kate, a girl we don’t see.

– there’s a fourth contestant in the pilot named Elijah (played by Jerrod Carmichael) whose presence isn’t really explained, nor really amounts to nothing. He adds no relevant observations, has nothing interesting to say, and doesn’t provide a window of insight for the audience into the Goodwin family. It reeks of “THIS PILOT IS TOO WHITE” so they threw a young black comic in there for good effect.

– why didn’t the father ever just call his children – or vice versa?

– the HIMYM creators can’t quit with these stupid fucking little subplots that fester for episodes, than are revealed to be nothing: in the pilot, it’s Lucinda setting a timer on her phone to go off in a month if Henry’s still in town. Who doesn’t want to bet that alarm doesn’t come back?