By 
Sometimes a TV show can really come into its own in a second season—think of Seinfeld or when Conan O’Brien hosted Late Night. The writers work out the kinks, get comfortable with the characters, and generally mature.
That hasn’t happened yet with American Auto, at least based on our viewing of the first episode of the second season, which begins Jan. 24 at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.
The show about the executives running the fictional Payne Motors carmaker in Detroit showed promise in its first season. It demonstrated several times last year that it knew something about the car industry, or that at least somebody on staff had done a little research about model cycles, design, and engineering. They even mentioned Autoweek once. That’s a nice foundation for a TV show. Yet the dialogue consists largely of crude bathroom humor and even racially insensitive “jokes.”
The most objectionable lines come from the character of company scion Wesley Payne (played by actor Jon Barinholtz), who is given over almost entirely to sophomoric, schoolboy humor, except when he’s handed racist lines to spout. His character is supposed to be the grandson of the company’s openly racist founder, in what may be a reference to Henry Ford, which might explain, in the writers’ minds, why he is this way. But he’s not even funny. Last season there was a good scene that explained his role in the family hierarchy and why he may be the way he is, but nothing was ever done with it and in season two he’s back to being just hopelessly offensive.
Likewise, administrative assistant Dori (played by an actor named X Mayo) is a character with potential to give voice to underappreciated administrative staff everywhere but starts out in season two merely carrying forward the theme of juvenile humor.
There’s a promising love story between Payne Motors’ PR maven Sadie Ryan (Harriet Dyer) and upwardly mobile young executive Jack Fortin (Tyre White), and that plot line continues to be teased at the start of season two. But these two likable characters are boxed in by total morons. Are they trying for a Jim Halpert/Pam Beesly romance?
Design engineer Cyrus Knight (Michael Benjamin Washington) does a good job with his character and isn’t given awful dialogue, so he helps make the 22 minutes bearable. But Payne CEO Katherine Hastings (SNL alum Ana Gasteyer) is wallowing about in her own confusing motivations.
Taken altogether you are left yelling at the TV screen, “Please don’t be this awful!” It’s a missed opportunity to have an interesting or even entertaining comedy set in the auto industry we all know and love. It’s made all the more tragic because anyone down the line who pitches a show about cars will be hit with, “Yeah, I saw American Auto. We don’t need another one of those…”
Please, television, make this better. Go with the redemption of the Wesley Payne character hinted at last season; let Dori the admin assistant develop into a sassy voice of 9-to-5 office-working America; clarify exactly what CEO Hastings is doing; and let the romance spark between Sadie and Jack. Take these promising morsels and make them into tasty, 22-minute meals. Please!
Have you seen American Auto? If so, how do you like the show? Please comment below.
