TV reviewFactory : Labor yields some laughs

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/life/stories/2008/06/28/2_TV_FACTORY.ART_ART_06-28-08_D5_U0AJQ9Q.html?sid=101

Saturday, June 28, 2008 3:11 AM
By David Kronke
LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS

Factory is no assembly-line comedy.

It's a grungy, improvised-to-the-point-of-slapdash production (the budget per episode looks to be no more than the mid-five figures). But, as the brainchild of Strangers With Candy co-creator Mitch Rouse, it occasionally manages some decent laughs.


Spike TV

Blue-collar slackers, from left: Jay Leggett, Mitch Rouse, David Pasquesi and Michael Coleman



The show revolves around four pals and co-workers whose jobs mainly seem to consist of milling around the break room. They have crummy jobs, crummy (or nonexistent) relationships and zero ambition.

Rouse plays Gary, perhaps the least pathetic of the quartet, which isn't saying much. Smitty (David Pasquesi) still lives, contentiously, with his ex-wife and thinks he has a chance with her college-age niece (delusion is what passes for ambition here). Chase (Michael Coleman), traumatized by an early relationship, insists his reasons for not dating are healthy. And Gus (Jay Leggett), an oafish whale, has yet to pop the question to his girlfriend of more than a decade.

The premiere episode opens with their boss getting killed when his tie pulls him into the machine he is operating. All four are being considered as the replacement boss, but none of them is much interested in the responsibility.

The best jokes are throwaway lines and random non sequiturs not generally apropos to the story line. A woman at the wake for the boss notes that one of the side effects of the Ritalin she eagerly pops is that it makes her forget she's driving while she's driving.

But give the guys credit: During an impromptu game of charades, they manage to guess the word wolverine with surprising skill.

Outside of an occasional manic outburst, Factory is surprisingly deadpan and laconic for a Spike TV production. But in the dreary, reality-show-glutted days of summer, this look at stagnant lives is almost like a breath of fresh air.

--will premiere at 10 p.m. Sunday on Spike TV.