Stream It Or Skip It: ‘American Auto’ On NBC, Where Ana Gasteyer Plays The Clueless CEO Of A Troubled Car Company

Workplace comedies are an age-old format in television, but since The Office, the current iteration of them have settled into a particular format. The dumb boss, the normal worker who is driven crazy by his/her inept coworkers; the office romance; the idiot guy who somehow still has a job; the bold assistant. The shows that work take a great cast and move beyond these cliches. But, like many comedies, sometimes it takes time to find its footing. NBC’s new sitcom American Auto is one of those shows. Is it good enough to watch while it finds its way?

AMERICAN AUTO: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Payne Motors headquarters in Detroit. Sadie (Harriet Dyer) starts to introduce new CEO Katherine Hastings (Ana Gasteyer) to the gathered executives but Katherine cuts her off.

The Gist: Katherine is not only Payne’s first female CEO, but she’s the first person outside of the Payne family to have the job. Her background isn’t in cars, though; it’s in pharmaceuticals. During her first meeting with her top execs, she just wants to get down to business. Wesley (Jon Barinholtz), who is only a top exec because his last name is Payne, basically spends the meeting making offhanded remarks about Katherine’s ability to lead.

Cyrus (Michael B. Washington), the company’s lead engineer, introduces the Ponderosa, a self-driving car that Katherine will introduce later that day. Katherine is immediately put off by the name, because it sounds like “ponderous.” Cyrus assures her it’s the highest-tech car the company has ever made. But when she gets in the car on the test track, it hits Jack (Tye White), a factory worker who was out on the test track; Cyrus, who is Black, acknowledges that the AI has trouble with dark skin tones. Now they have to figure out what to feature on the Ponderosa that isn’t the “racist” self-driving feature.

Sadie has her own problems; she prides herself in being a professional, but she slept with Jack after a retirement party a few weeks prior, and now things are weird between them. Jack is willing to consider a transfer to make things less uncomfortable, but when Katherine includes Jack in the planning of a new Ponderosa prototype, Jack inadvertently tells everyone about Sadie’s Ferrari bedsheets and car-shaped showerhead. Their secret is out, and Katherine seems to be just fine with it, telling the two of them “don’t bang” as she helps him Frankenstein a prototype from parts they all stole from employees’ cars in the parking lot.

Katherine puts her executive assistant Dori (X Mayo) in charge of the presentation’s lights and music, despite her telling her boss that the most technical thing she uses is “my vibrator.” With Sadie’s help, Katherine BSes her way through the presentation; in the aftermath, they sit on the floor of the executive suite, drink Champagne, and watch their stock price plummet. While Katherine thinks things are salvageable, Sadie finds out that Katherine promoted Jack to get a “working class perspective” in the executive ranks.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? American Auto has the same feel as Superstore, the previous show Justin Spitzer created. It’s not a mockumentary, but it has Superstore‘s fly-on-the-wall style, with shaky cameras and rapid dialogue.

Our Take: American Auto is a pretty straightforward workplace comedy, with characters that don’t deviate much from what we’ve seen in the recent past. Sadie is the one who has her head on straight and is constantly frustrated by what’s going on around her. Katherine is an auto CEO who doesn’t even know how to drive. Cyrus is the smartest guy in the room, and he knows it, but he has his own issues; in the second episode, he knows an awful lot about the behavior of serial killers. Elliot (Humphrey Ker), the company’s lead attorney, is basically a tall doofus.

In reality, a company like Payne Motors shouldn’t exist; in the long history of inept sitcom corporations, Payne seems to be one of the most inept we’ve ever seen. It’s that over-the-top ineptness, which includes the fact that its new CEO is semi-clueless, that takes us out of enjoying the show as much as we should. There are plenty of funny character-based situations, and the cast is displaying good chemistry in the first two episodes. But the “been there, done that” feeling of American Auto is pervasive, even if the first two episodes have some funny moments.

The beats we see so far feel rote, like with Jack and Sadie’s will-they-won’t-they, and with Barinholtz’s one-note office idiot character that’s reminiscent of the one that his brother Ike played on The Mindy Project. Even X Mayo’s Dori feels like she’s close cousins with Retta’s character Donna in Parks And Rec. We think Spitzer can shape these characters over the first season into a group that’s more distinctive, and there’s enough character-driven laughs in both episodes to give us hope that the show will find its way. But viewers may not stick around long enough for that to happen.

Sex and Skin: Besides Sadie and Jack talking about their night together, there’s nothing.

Parting Shot: Katherine tells Sadie that Jack has been hired to work in the corporate offices. “I guess we’ll be seeing each other occasionally. This’ll be fun,” Jack tells a shocked Sadie.

Sleeper Star: Michael B. Washington’s character Cyrus is the most fully-realized character in the first two episodes, and he tends to have some of the funniest lines, like when he describes the piecemeal Ponderosa to Katherine, evoking both Bjork and Blossom in the same sentence.

Most Pilot-y Line: Katherine compares the self-driving car to a Roomba. Cyrus tries to explain the technology, then thinks otherwise and agrees. That’s one of those over-the-top lines from Katherine that makes us wonder how she got chosen as CEO to begin with.

Our Call: STREAM IT. There’s enough promise to American Auto to keep us watching when it starts its regular timeslot in January. But the show really needs to get beyond workplace comedy archetypes if it’s really going to shine.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream American Auto on NBC.com