Alex, Inc.

How many series in recent years have pleased me with their family atmosphere or at least an interesting concept, and how many of them have I had to mourn at the end of the season? I simply have bad luck with shows like Sean Saves the World, Weird Loners, New Normal, or Selfie, and my taste for pleasant sitcoms with a slightly nostalgic mood from the relatively recent era when hit comedies could come from almost anything simply predisposes me to keep diving into lost causes. Alex, Inc. had it all figured out even before the premiere, because despite Zach Braff's efforts to spread awareness on social media, almost no one knew about the show, let alone watched it. And yet, both Braff himself and all the creators involved tried to make the familiar formula more interesting right from the start. It was all the more entertaining to see how over the course of a few episodes, Alex started becoming more and more like a child, increasingly speaking through voice-over and unintentionally turning the main character into a somewhat more grown-up and mature version of Dr. "JD" Dorian. However, this is no new Scrubs, nor a new classic. Braff, the scattered Hillary Anne Matthews, and the always stoic Michael Imperioli were able to create perfect on-screen chemistry in a minimal space, but whether it was because the work environment greatly overshadowed the family one, or because the entire series resembles this or that instead of blazing its own path, the cancellation was a logical choice, even though I found its mood much more enjoyable than some of the current sitcom hits. (22/08/2018)