New show "Outsourced"....does anyone else find this new comedy troubling?

[shoopnyc]

The new show on NBC makes a comedy about the fact that we have sent jobs overseas; I find it really weird...

[annabanana]

1. Ahh yes.. warm fuzzies to make us forget what's actually going on. . .n/t

[ixion]

7. Exactly. They diffuse actual criticism (and the true implications of oursourcing) and

reduce it to mindless sit-com level idiocy.

:grr:

[Scuba]

2. Sick.

[old mark]

3. I wonder if my SIL is in it - she did that in real life for years...she went to India

to set up the companies over there to do the customer service jobs we used to do here.


mark

[Cirque du So-What]

4. I can't figure out which is more humorous

Cultural stereotypes or economic tragedies. I predict this sitcom - which must have been conceived by sociopaths - won't sit well with the general population.

[northernlights]

5. so who do they focus on?

The unemployed losing home after fruitless job search and trying to make do on Big Mac pay, living under bridge?

Family with unemployed relatives living in basement, living room and attic, with no privacy, no life, not enough food to go around?

The newly employed in outsourced call center trying to pretend to be American by adopting an american name to cover thick accent that nobody can understand?

Or the frustrated customer who can't get any actual customer support?

Wierd....:shrug:

[no_hypocrisy]

6. My prediction: It will last about as long as "Gung Ho" did in the Eighties.

9 episodes or less.

[fasttense]

8. I watched it to see how they were treating the issue.

It was boring. There is so much room for comedy there, I wonder why it wasn't funny? It was just so sad.

[tridim]

15. Yea, it was pretty awful, and amazingly cookie-cutter.

I doubt it will last.

[lightningandsnow]

9. I find it unfortunate...

that South Asian actors can only seem to get parts on TV as terrorists or call centre workers.

[vi5]

13. I don't know about that.....

I mean I agree this show is bad and in very poor taste.

But on the same night and on the same network you have Aziz Ansari on Parks and Recreation and the fact that he is of South Asian origin is not even mentioned. In fact he plays a typical American male twenty something jerky guy.

And on Community you have the guy who plays Abed and again, with the exception of one episode where his father was on and had an accent, the fact that he's of South Asian origin is again barely even a blip on the radar.

And until last year Kal Pen was on House playing a doctor. Again, ethnicity was never a factor.

And those are just 3 off the top of my head.

So yeah, the show in question is bad and in poor taste. And there's definitely a tendency on stupid shows like 24 to go to the South Asian terrorist well. But there are some very visible examples in a given week on Network TV that disprove the "Call center workers and terrorists" notion.

And hey, it could be worse, they could have their ethnicity on tv be represented by Jersey Shore like mine is. I'd take the above examples I gave of role models over Snookie and "The Situation" any day. :)

[JohnnyLib2]

10. Seemed to be in dubious taste much of the time.

I'm wondering what overall reaction we will be hearing.

[MH1]

11. I saw a few minutes of it and found the stereotyping troubling

even though I have to admit I found some of it funny and somewhat 'accurate' (to the extent that stereotyping is ever accurate).

I work with many folks from India and they are good people. I don't like that we have 10% unemployment in this country and my company seems unable to find qualified new hires among unemployed American citizens, but instead resort to H1Bs (which by the way there are still H1B allotments available this year)*. But I do like the people from India that I've had the pleasure to work with. And while it can be humorous, I think it's wrong to stereotype like this show does. How is it better than telling polish jokes (or jewish or black or italian or ...)?


* for anyone who is interested the pay is probably between 40-60K for qualifications that would have netted as much as 75K a few years ago. But if I were an out of work programmer I would take the job even at 40K. Maybe not the first 40K job offered to me, but after a few months ... it's better to have reduced salary on your resume than a long stretch of unemployment. Ergo .... I can only conclude that either a) there really is a skill gap or b) unemployed American programmers are stupid; refer to a).

[TexasObserver]

12. The show highlights the problem of global corps exploiting humans.

It presents the American companies who outsource in a bad light, not a good one. It shows the reality of jobs being moved out of the country because places like India and China can provide a dozen or more workers for the price of one here. It also shows that the globalists do not care about the humans involved.

It also demonstrates why the worker bees - American or foreign - should not engage in cultural sniping or take out their frustrations on other worker bees.

The topic is obviously very sensitive, but try to look it as spotlighting the problem of outsourcing, rather than endorsing it.

[ThomasQED]

19. I agree with you and I liked it.

I thought it was the best of the "new shows" I watched last week.

[Bluenorthwest]

14. The show sucks. To be troubling, it would have to be good.

It will be gone. Some of the problems are foundational, they just don't get how to do the funny, and it is not correctable.
They need Parks and Recreation back asap.

[Warren Stupidity]

16. I found it offensively horrible

but then again it is network tv. Between the ads they sneak in really bad shows.

[Bozita]

17. Good thing for NBC that somebody invented the canned laughter machine.

Now we know when to laugh.

[L0oniX]

24. You mean the canned laughter machine that's made in China?

[glinda]

18. Intended to soften the public's attitude to jobs leaving here I would guess.

[Curmudgeoness]

22. Agreed. And putting faces and lives to the people taking jobs

from us would soften attitudes even more.

[Initech]

20. It's not appropriate considering what's going on.

[farmbo]

21. The earnest, young Everyman/ hero lacks self-examination, cheerfully abandons his co-workers...

... at the drop of a (corporate) hat, and heads to India to pursue his American dream.

The writers shot the only stateside action in an empty office so that we viewers wouldn't have to empathize with any actual laid-off workers. (They we're probably 50- something, workaday louts and moochers anyway!)

The Indian cast are (surprise!) all good-looking, twenty-something, middle class kids, now pulling themselves up by their bootstraps by landing jobs with this forward-looking US company. No reference to the mind-numbing poverty and third-world wage scales (and IRS tax deductions) which actually encourage outsourcing.

And...Oh yeah...I watched the first episode and it AIN'T FUNNY!

[L0oniX]

23. Hey lets bring back Bum Fights videos too ...and while yer at it why not have a tv show about...

poor people losing their jobs, getting kicked out of homes and standing in food lines ...that should get some huge laughs too.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

25. Unwatchable, although I love their office

I made it as far as "Jingle Jugs"

Although I have never been in an office building in India that looked like that, most of them look like giant tin shacks with cubicles.

[davidwparker]

26. I won't watch it. n/t

[Nye Bevan]

27. Yeah. Like that "comedy" from years ago about a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital

Who could possibly find humor in that?

Comedy should be all obvious "slapstick" type humor, and should steer clear of any difficult issues.

[onenote]

31. or that comedy about being POWs or a comedy about a bunch of guys who hang out in a bar

or a comedy about a lovable right winger, his ditzy wife, daughter and "meathead" son-in-law. Or a comedy about a lovable group of rededial education students or a comedy about a PT boat in the Pacific and their wacky fun in fighting the "japs".

[Quantess]

28. So, don't watch it. Problem solved.

I highly doubt I'll be watching it, either.

Same advice goes to Christian Fundies who think Harry Potter is "troubling": Don't watch it, then. Why waste a moment even thinking about it?

[Xithras]

29. I watched it, and just didn't find it that funny.

The debate over whether outsourcing should be a "humor" subject aside, it's just NOT written well. The funniest parts were barely chuckleworthy, and most of their attempts at humor just fell flat.

I honestly don't see this show making it through the season. I watched it once out of curiosity. I watch Community and enjoy the oddball humor, and thought it might be more of the same type of (often) self deprecating humor. It wasn't.

[librechik]

30. More bread and circuses to soothe the gladiators and slaves

You ever heard the one about the Carthaginian Slave and the Temple Prostitute? But enough about Senator Vitter...

Theres is nothing funny about outsourcing except lame ethnic humor which is not funny.

Nice try, networks. Too soon.

[LongTomH]

32. Damn Straight!!!!

I was (past tense) a senior programmer / analyst! :grr: :grr: :grr:

[Dreamer Tatum]

33. The show is made overseas? nt