Ten Items or Less Rings Up One Sandwich Short of a Picnic

A creative process does not necessarily make for a creative product, as is the case with the half-hour comedy series 10 Items or Less. The TBS show, which began its second season last month, uses both improvisation and writing in every episode but doesn’t really take advantage of the distinctive features of either technique.

The show brings together an ensemble of actors who will seem vaguely familiar to most viewers—the cumulative list of guest appearances on network sitcoms and dramas for the entire cast is impressive. Did that mean blonde girl appear on Law & Order recently? No, she was Jan in The Brady Bunch Movie. Wasn’t that guy on SNL? No, he’s the caveman of Geico commercial fame. Caveman John Lehr not only stars in the series but is also the show’s creator. In every episode, the actors improvise all of their own dialogue without ever even seeing a script.

Lehr plays Leslie Pool, the owner of an Ohio supermarket called Greens & Grains, which he inherits after his father dies at the beginning of the series. The show centers around the store as Leslie—an unlikely boss—and his employees think up schemes to stay in business despite the competition of the local Super Value Mart. The rival store is located down the street and is run by the feisty Amy (Jennifer Elise Cox), who makes plenty of screechy appearances at Greens & Grains.

In the season two premiere, Leslie creates a misguided promotion for the store in which customers stand in a glass box and try to grab silver dollars as they’re blown about by a fan. Obviously, the heavy coins don’t budge. The mass of money in the glass box leads to an attempted robbery of Greens & Grains. The premise is amusing, but scattered situations like this will likely inspire merely an acknowledgement of humor rather than an all-out laugh.

The few funny gems in the episode are overshadowed by the inconsistent behavior of the characters. When the employees are taken hostage, they switch from genuine fear of the gun being pointed at their heads to inexplicable nonchalance. Leslie even asks the burglars to come back the next day when the store will literally be giving away cash through their new promotion.

Whereas improvised elements on TV shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm add informality to the dialogue and specificity to the jokes, 10 Items or Less still uses loud gestures and insane reactions to get laughs. At one point in the premiere, the show hints at a genuine human relationship when a gunman looks into the eyes of one of his hostages and tells her that he’s not going to kill anyone. The moment, however, turns out to be a setup for a ridiculous side plot about Stockholm Syndrome.

The climax of the premiere fits in with the weird contrasts present in the rest of the show. For the big final joke, Leslie accidentally gets shot. It sounds horrifying and violent, but it’s not, because of where he gets shot: the butt. Get it?