Fox Mid-Season Pilot Review: LA to Vegas - Premieres Tuesday (Jan. 2)

Monday, January 01, 2018

Fox Mid-Season Pilot Review: LA to Vegas - Premieres Tuesday (Jan. 2)

LA to Vegas - Tuesdays at 9:00PM ET/PT on Fox
Premieres Tuesday, January 2, 2018 at 9:00PM ET/PT

by Skees

Los Angeles to Vegas: it's a weekend flight that you can take from the first city to the second city every weekend to escape everything and let what happens in Vegas stay in Vegas. Fox's newest sitcom, LA to Vegas, follows a flight crew that makes that trip every weekend, along with some of the familiar passengers who make that trek every weekend and a few guests who come along.

Cast Details:

Kim Matula as Ronnie Messing
Ed Weeks as Colin
Nathan Lee Graham as Bernard
Olivia Macklin as Nichole
Peter Stormare as Artem
Dylan McDermott as Captain Dave Pratman

Kim Matula (Ronnie) is best known for her long-running role in the CBS soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful, and aside from a single episode of How I Met Your Mother, she makes her sitcom debut with this series.

Ed Weeks (Colin) is known for his role of Jeremy Reed on The Mindy Project. He has also appeared in episodes of Royal Pains, House of Lies, and other series in the UK.

Nathan Lee Graham (Bernard) appears in the web series Hug-O-Gram and has also appeared in the series The Comeback, as well as episodes of Scrubs and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Olivia Macklin (Nichole) is a relative newcomer to acting who has appeared in HBO's The Young Pope

Peter Stormare (Artem) is a Swedish born actor who has had roles in Sweden and still lives there part-time, and in the United States, he has been seen in series such as Watching Ellie, Prison Break, Weeds, The Blacklist, Arrow, Manhattan, and Longmire, among others.

Dylan McDermott (Captain Dave Pratman) is best known for his role on the ABC series, The Practice. He has also appeared in American Horror Story, Hostages, and Stalker.

Pilot Plot:

"Pilot" (Airs January 2 at 9:00PM ET)

In the pilot, we meet Ronnie Messing (Kim Matula), the airline stewardess who isn't happy with where she is in her professional life. No, she doesn't want to leave behind the life of a stewardess, she wants to leave her job at her current airline on the Los Angeles to Las Vegas flight and get that job with Delta on the Los Angeles to New York flight. When she learns she didn't get it, she takes drastic action, including quitting her job (at least temporarily) and getting involved in a fling with one of the regular passengers, Colin (Ed Weeks) on the flight. Meanwhile, a young couple on the flight is headed to Vegas to elope to escape the big wedding their family has in mind, and that should all go as planned, right?

Analysis:

When I'm watching/reviewing a pilot, I try to look for the good parts of it and focus on those. And I definitely did that with this one as well, but it was hard to find anything good to say about this, as it sort of stinks.

Before getting into what's wrong with it, maybe it is worth pointing out the positives of the series. The individual cast members of the series make up a great are decent actors who could do well on a good TV series with good casting. But that long list of qualifiers already brings up the first problem with the series: it has a cast that doesn't seem to fit in with one another. In watching the first episode, you couldn't really see how they all fit together. So what we've got here is a case of a good cast that seems to be poorly matched.

I also couldn't really tell where the stories are going to go on this series. In the pilot, we got to see Ronnie losing out on a job opportunity and (possibly) opening a new door with a new relationship and the young couple who went to Las Vegas to get hitched. The possibilities with the main cast seem limited, though, as long as they're in the air, so this series will definitely need good guest stars with good stories, and the one in this pilot wasn't all that compelling of a story.

I had trouble finding the laughs in the pilot as well. I've always felt that not all sitcoms need a laugh every minute. In fact, some of the best sitcoms of all time won't necessarily make you laugh out loud at all. But they make up for that with solid storylines, which this series is lacking in what I've seen.

It is worth pointing out that one cast member that I sort of enjoyed that seemed to be underutilized in the pilot was Nathan Lee Graham. I had never really heard of him (although I've seen every episode of Scrubs, which he appeared in one episode, so I've undoubtedly seen him before), but some of the better scenes and somewhat funny (the comedy was still limited by the series itself) scenes came from him. Assuming this series doesn't work out, it would be nice to see him elsewhere, as he seems to have a lot of potential.

Conclusion:

I wish that I could say that I have a glimmer of hope for this series, but I honestly don't. This strikes me as one of those "fly by night" (pun intended) sitcoms that Fox likes to bring out midseason that vanishes within a few weeks and is subsequently completely forgotten about. I'll give it a fair shake and watch it as long as Fox continues to give it a chance, and it's only fair for everybody to do that, but this series came in with low expectations and it seems to have met that standard. Perhaps if the series doesn't stay as "grounded" as the pilot, there is hope for it.

Final Numbers (out of 5 stars):

Watchability: 2/5

Funniness: 2/5

Overall: 2/5

Discuss the show after you watch it on Wednesday, January 2, 2018 at 9:00PM on our message board.

Related Links:

Fox.com Official Site

TV.com

epguides.com

Internet Movie Database

Wikipedia

LA to Vegas Photo Gallery

Preview:

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Molly Gordon (The Bear/Ramy) - Catch Molly on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon at 11:35pm on NBC.
John Krasinksi (The Office) - John appears on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert at 11:35pm on CBS.
Jenny Slate (The Great North/Big Mouth/Married/Bob's Burgers) - Jenny makes a special appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert at 11:35pm on CBS.
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Garcelle Beauvais (The Other Black Girl/Survival of the Thickest/The Jamie Foxx Show/Merry Happy Whatever) - NBC's Today catches up with Garcelle in the 9am hour.
Julie Bowen (Modern Family/Ed) - NBC's Today catches up with Julie in the 10am hour.
Valerie Bertinelli (Hot in Cleveland/Cafe Americain/Sydney/One Day at a Time) - Valerie talks about Lifetime's Love, Again on NBC's Today in the 10am hour. She is covering the news sunny-side up with Drew and Ross on a repeat of The Drew Barrymore Show, so check your local listings.
Kellee Stewart (My Boys) - Kellee shares her fertility journey on Sherri, so check your local listings.
Regina Hall (Black Monday/Grandfathered/Married/Second Generation Wayans) - Regina tells Drew all about her action-packed film One Battle After Another on a repeat of The Drew Barrymore Show, so check your local listings.
Teri Hatcher (The Odd Couple/Sunday Dinner/Karen's Song/The Love Boat) - Teri is whipping up a delicious meal in the kitchen with her Desperately Devoted Podcast Co-Hosts onscreen daughter Andrea Bowen and real-life daughter Emerson Tenney on a repeat of The Drew Barrymore Show, so check your local listings.
Fabrizio Guido (Running Point) - Fabrizio talks about Netflix's Running Point on Access Daily with Mario & Kit, so check your local listings.
Jessica Hecht (Special/Red Oaks/What About Joan?/The Single Guy) - Jessica is a guest on New York Living on WPIX in New York at 10:05am.