Stars: Greg Grunberg, Constance Zimmer
Writer: Cindy Chupack
Director: Marc Buckland
Network: NBC, airs Thursday nights
Original Telecast: June 2, 2011

The good news, the person who greenlit the new NBC anthology romantic comedy series has long since been fired and a new regime is in place. The bad news, I still had to sit through one of the worst hours of television that I will never get back.

LOVE BITES has an unfortunate name, because it’s easy to sum up the show in one easy work. It bites. And it bites hard.

The idea of a romantic anthology isn’t a new one (LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE anyone), but the problem is, this kind of show just doesn’t cut it on network television anymore. It feels like a neutered romantic indie film searching for some kind of heart and soul. The dialogue is TV-friendly cute and the scenarios are unbelievable and rather anti-climactic (someone makes a joke that Anna Paquin made being bi-sexual not interesting anymore – BAD!)

Trying to quell the fear that audiences will not a follow a weekly show without recurring characters, LOVE BITES strings together three different stories loosely anchored by married couple Colleen and Judd Rouscher (Constance Zimmer and Greg Grunberg).

The three stories in his series premiere are pretty lame. The first one follows a woman who feels her pregnant friend gets all the men because she has a great story – she’s a surrogate to her sister’s baby. In order to beat that story, she claims she’s a virgin to a guy she likes at a bar, and then finds out lying is not a good thing.

That’s the story. Really. That’s it. Oh, and there’s some BATTLESTAR GALACTICA references, because, well, LOVE BITES is produced by NBC and NBC owns BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

The second story finds a guy getting fired from his job and then feels inadequate because his fiancée has orgasms with her super-powered vibrator and not with him.

I’m not lying, seriously, that’s the story. The pay-off, well, after the hour was over, I didn’t really see a point to that story. It was a loose idea, and nothing more. No story. No real resolution. Just someone thinking, “hey, wouldn’t it be funny if a woman could only have orgasms with a vibrator.” Unfortunately, no one had the heart to tell creator and writer Cindy Chupack that you need more to hang an anthology story on.

The final story follows Judd on a bachelor party fishing trip with guest star Craig Robinson (of THE OFFICE). They have to fly overnight, and on the plane is Jennifer Love Hewitt, playing, well Jennifer Love Hewitt. Judd has such a great relationship with his wife, they have a “do it” list with celebrities. If they ever get a chance to bed that celebrity, they get to do it. Jennifer Love Hewitt is at the top of the list. So Judd and Jennifer (unrealistically, mind you) connect on the flight, he tells her his story and she wants to do it with him in the airplane bathroom. The reality though – the bathroom in an airplane is a horrible place to have sex, and well, Judd loves his wife and can’t go through it.

Wow. No real surprise here.

LOVE BITES is not edgy, it’s not funny and well, it’s pretty awful. I’m all for any network including NBC to take a chance, particularly on a terribly hard format like a romantic anthology series, but to deliver such an atrocious piece of garbage like this is shocking.

Who thought this would work?

Well, NBC clearly didn’t. Even though it was greenlighted, it was supposed to air in the fall, then midseason and now it’s being dumped into the dead of summer where it’s been given little to no promotion. If the ratings aren’t good, don’t count on it lasting more than a couple of episodes before being put out of its misery. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make up for the time I’ve lost watching and writing about a show that was D.O.A. Please, NBC, put some CHUCK reruns on so I can get this awful aftertaste out of my mouth.

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Click on Link: Ax’s LOVE BITES – Stand and Deliver review
Click on Link: Ax’s LOVE BITES – “Sky High” review
Click on Link: Ax’s LOVE BITES – “Keep on Truckin'” review
Click on Link: Ax’s LOVE BITES – “How To …” review
Click on Link: Ax’s LOVE BITES – Series Premiere Review

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