Show With Low Self-Esteem

"Yeah, the guy wearing the $4,000 suit is going to do a new TV Show...COME ON !"

Now let's talk about Running Wilde, the last baby of Mitch Hurwitz and Will Arnett.Everybody was waiting for it but did we really need Running Wilde ?The answer is "yes" we always need a new show wrote by Mitch but no necesseraly on Fox. Arrested Development was to clever for the channel, "Sit Down, Shut Up" was not made for Fox and Running Wilde was simply useless for Fox. At first there was a contract signed between Will Arnett and Fox (see the article about it) and Will was free to choose whoever he wants to work with.With no surprises he choose Mitch Hurwitz and together they made Running Wilde who was called at first "Wilde Kingdom".

Let's see the plot :

The show centers on Steve Wilde (Will Arnett), a self-centered billionaire who is clueless about most things in the real world. Emmy Kadubic (Keri Russell) is Steve's high school sweetheart. When the series opens, she is an activist that lives in a rain forest along with her fiance Andy (David Cross) and daughter Puddle (Stefania Owen). Puddle refuses to speak at first, as an attempt to get her mother to move out of the rain forest. Steve invites Emmy to a party where he is to accept an award. Surprised at the thought that Steve has finally become a better person, she decides to go. When at the party, she soon finds out that he is giving the award to himself, which is more like what she expected.

The next day Puddle speaks to a drunk Steve about what she thinks about living in the jungle. Steve briefly thinks that the conversation is telepathic even though her mouth is moving. Steve and Puddle stage an intricate scenario to fool Emmy into to staying at Steve's mansion, which fails. Emmy scolds Steve about taking advantage of a young girl who does not speak, and Steve takes the blame for Puddle's plan. This causes Puddle to speak to her mother, telling her that Steve must have some morality left in him, since he lied for her without gaining anything. Puddle explains that she doesn't like living in a jungle, and she wants to stay with Steve. Emmy agrees to stay for Puddle, but only in the treehouse Steve originally built for her when they were young. As Steve tries to win back Emmy, she vows to change him into a more selfless person.

The idea was clearly good and the material was here to do a good show, maybe not as great as Arrested but still a good show.

At this point I was hopefull about the whole thing. Meanwhille the AD's movie was put on "pause".

And then came out the first trailer :

After seeing this I was disappointed and scared for the show. The trailer was simply not good at all, what a shame for us fans of Mitch.

But the airing date for the first episode came and I watched it, maybe I was in a good mood that day but I've appreciate it. Don't misunderstand my words, appreciate doesn't mean it was really good.

In fact the pilot was far from being great, it was just good and I'll tell more about it on a future article.

Even if I liked it, the critics were not enthusiast about Running Wilde :

The Hollywood Reporter

Reviewed by: Randee Dawn

Wilde is a fast-paced grab bag; it's hard not to like a character who dunderheadedly imports an Amazon tribe to a five-star hotel rather than tell his dad not to drill on their land, all to prove he's a decent guy. But for now, audiences will have to sort through the good stuff and toss aside the lumps of coal that keep "Wilde" from being a truly wild ride.

New York Post

Reviewed by: Michael Starr

The writing here isn't very snappy, Steve and Emmy are one-dimensional cutouts and Russell, the former "Felicity" star, looks uncomfortable playing it for laughs.

San Francisco Chronicle

Reviewed by: Tim Goodman

While the reworked pilot is a marked improvement over the original, the parts are still not working together, but you'd like to believe they will be in a few episodes.

Variety

Reviewed by: Brian Lowry

The best the pilot can muster is a few silly hops.

TV Squad

Reviewed by: Maureen Ryan

Good comedies take a lot of work, but that strain shouldn't show up on the screen. It pains me to say that, despite all the obvious effort, I can't see how Running Wilde could get significantly better.

So why everyone was disappointed ?

The first lead for an answer is the "Arrested Development Effect" (I'm gonna call that the "ADE"), when we talk about Mitch, Will, Jason Bateman and the whole AD's cast we always mention Arrested Development and how great the sho was. It's great to not forget the serie but It's a trap for Mitch and Will in the Running Wilde's case. We were waiting for a second Arrested Development but it's not gonna happen, whatever you think. Arrested was a financial waste for Fox and they're not stupid to ask Mitch for a show like that again. C'mon ! Do you really think it was possible ?

Mitch and Will understood that very well and like the Coca Light they made an "Arrested Development Light", a serie with no sugar. No sugar ? No real interest for us.

Once again the strategy was wrong, people were not interested by RW because of is lack of taste, but Mitch said interesting things about his strategy, I'll talk about that after.

Seriously if you've watched the show you're gonna be agree with me, the serie seemed so faker. Everything was superficial, maybe it was an artistic choice to highlight the superficiality of Steve Wilde ? But I don't think so. We don't believe in the universe of the show.

But not everything in Running Wilde was bad, they were some good ideas and some good episodes like :

No seriously you'll see in future articles about the episodes.

So I've said that the strategy wasn't good, do we really know what is the real strategy ?

Month ago I read an interview of Mitch, for Running Wilde he wanted to start the show in a simple way and put everything in place gradually unlike AD where all the pieces were there at the beginning.

To conclude I would say that Running Wilde is not good but is not bad also, Mitch & Will missed the potential of the show.